Consider the Novel

In post-modern times, is the novel too old-fashioned to survive in the cultural mainstream? The New Yorker takes a look. For example:

There are altogether so many ways to abuse plot that we tend to forget what plot is at bottom—and what is lost when it is dispensed with entirely. Plot dramatizes incident and moves characters through time. In good novels, these functions combine to approximate not only the reality of life, which is of course linear and time-bound, but also, crucially, life’s tendency to defy abstraction and deflate our pretentions—to make fools of us.