This is also why the new novels die so quickly, and why the old fairy tales endure for ever.

The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal.

But in the modern psychological novel the hero is abnormal; the centre is not central.

Hence the fiercest adventures fail to affect him adequately, and the book is monotonous.

You can make a story out of a hero among dragons; but not out of a dragon among dragons.