21st Century: Novels No Longer Work

Critic Roger Kimball offers up a fascinating, if a bit long-winded, discourse on why the novel might be the best art form for the 21st Century. The article is studded with spectacular insights, well worth your time.

Here are a few:

"The problem with computers is not the worlds they give us instant access to but the world they encourage us to neglect."

"Everyone knows Andy Warhol’s quip that someday everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. Behind the humor—or perhaps I should say “behind the cynicism”—of that remark is the dark prospect of significant cultural diminishment. A quarter-hour’s fame is not fame. On the contrary, it is the demotic parody of fame; it is mere celebrity. It is worth pausing to consider how much of our cultural life—even in its most august precincts—is caught up in the voracious logic of celebrity. It is a logic that builds obsolescence into the banner of achievement and requires that seriousness abdicate before the palace of notoriety and its sound-bite culture."

"It does seem as if there have been important alterations in the relation between life and literature—between life and the world of culture generally—and this is as much due to changes in the character of life as to changes in the character of culture."