The artist must possess a clearly unique and individual style （of sound, language, or color）。 Moreover, that uniqueness should be immediately perceivable on first sight （or hearing）。
That style must have the power to update itself. It should grow with time, never resting in the same place for long, since it expresses an internal and spontaneous process of self-reinvention.
Over time, that characteristic style should become integrated within the psyche of its audience, to become a part of their basic standard of evaluation. Subsequent generations of artists should see that style as a rich resource from which they can draw.
An artist need not fulfill all three requirements equally, of course, to be considered “original.” There are cases where requirements 1 and 3 are clear while 2 is a little weak, or where 2 and 3 are clear while 1 is somehow lacking. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that the basic components of “originality” can, to a greater or lesser degree, be found within these boundaries.
Setting 1 aside for the time being, we can see that, for both 2 and 3, the passage of time is a significant element. In short, whether a creator and his or her work qualify as original or not depends to a large part on the test of time. When an artist with a unique style grabs the eyes or ears of the public and then vanishes from sight or grows tiresome, it’s hard to call them “original.” Rather, they’re more likely to fall into the “flash in the pan” category.
I have witnessed that pattern in a variety of fields. Creative artists may grab your attention right off the bat with their daring novelty, but before you know it, they have disappeared. At some point thereafter, they become one of those people you think of only to wonder, “Whatever happened to so-and-so?” Artists of that sort probably lack staying power and a capacity for self-reinvention. Before we can say much about an artist’s style, we need to see an accumulated body of work. Otherwise there just isn’t enough to go on. We can’t really assess someone’s originality until we can line up a number of their works and examine them from a variety of angles.
Suppose, for example, that Beethoven had composed only one symphony in his life—the Ninth. How then would we evaluate him as a composer? Could we deduce the Ninth’s intrinsic significance, or its degree of originality, in isolation? I think it would be very difficult. Looking at his symphonies alone, I think it is only because we are able to see the Ninth as a continuation from the First through the Eighth that we can fathom the Ninth’s greatness, and its overwhelming originality, in a three-dimensional and contextualized way.
I hope to be “original” in my expression, just as I imagine all artists do. As I have already explained, however, it’s not something I myself can determine. However loudly I proclaim it from the rooftops, however often I am praised for it by the critics and the media, our voices are fated to vanish in the wind. All I can do is entrust the final decision to those for whom I write—in other words, my readers—and the passage of an appropriate amount of time. My sole task is to work as hard as I can to provide as many “cases” as possible. In short, to keep adding works I can be satisfied with to the pile, buttressing and extending my total oeuvre.
One saving grace—or at least a possible salvation—for me is the fact that so many literary critics have harshly criticized my works. One famous critic has even branded me a “con man.” I guess by that he means that I have been swindling my readers by feeding them meaningless drivel. Since a novelist is, to some extent, an illusionist by trade, I suppose being called a con man may be taken as a kind of reverse compliment, in which case maybe I should rejoice at being attacked in those terms. Still, to be honest, having someone say those things about me—or, more precisely, write them down on paper for public consumption—isn’t a lot of fun. An illusionist is, after all, an occupation of sorts, while marriage fraud is a crime, which makes me feel the expression is rather lacking in delicacy. （Then again, perhaps the problem is not an absence of delicacy but a sloppy choice of metaphor.）
There were members of the literary community, of course, who looked favorably on my work, but they were few and their voices were lost in the din. Overall, in my estimation, the nos emanating from the literary establishment outweighed the yeses by a wide margin. In those days, if I had leapt into a pond to save an old woman from drowning, the critics—and I mean this only half-jokingly—would have found something to carp about. “A mere publicity stunt,” they would have scoffed. “Surely she could have swum to shore.”