Even the characters who seem to be in the purest search for Vereker's great secret, Corvick and Gwendolen, will not share it with their friends. When they find out, they all want to publish it for themselves. Vereker himself seems to look down on the book's literary critics, citing their lack of vision. Vereker addresses the narrator at several points in the novel: “You miss this, my dear, with an inimitable assurance; the fact that you are terribly intelligent and your article is very terribly nice doesn't make the slightest difference.."