As Ralph Vaughn Williams said about the music of Brahms, “It ought never to be heard for the first time.” So similar to Eliot’s “it appears likely that poets in our civilization, as it exists at present, must be difficult.”
I don’t hold much truck with musts, should, or oughts, but I know what moves me. And if a story does not mystify or challenge me within the first page, I have no use for it. Which is yet another reason to disdain editors and agents since they believe the opposite.
Jedediah Smith 