It's hard to see how great, or even good, novels will ever be generated by an approach that learns statistics over a text corpus, just because the vast majority

It's hard to see how great, or even good, novels will ever be generated by an approach that learns statistics over a text corpus, just because the vast majority of novels that can be included in that corpus aren't great, and not even that good. "Computer, write me a good Fantasy novel" is science fiction.