hanya yanagihara one of the greatest writers of all time fr because she didn't want to be famous or well liked, she wanted to be daring and controversial. she knew that she could have written one of these sensationally loved found family, friends to lovers, hurt/comfort, happy ever after tropes book that would have really hit with people on tiktok and youtube but instead she wrote "he knows now: people don't change. he cannot change" and "between the ecstasy of being aloft and the anticipation of his landing, which he knows will be terrible, he knows that x will always equal x, no matter what he does" and she knew that some people would hate her for writing that. she did not censor out any horrifying reality of some people's lives, nor was she trying to make a book about trauma and abuse an easy read even though she knew that people would absolutely despise her for the perspective she provided. other authors can write books all they want but as long as authors care more about getting "must read tiktok sensation" stickers stuck onto their books rather than going back to understanding the purpose of art and literature, nobody's going to write crack cocaine literary pieces like a little life ever again.
