ABSTRACT
Nothing lasts forever. After several decades of dire warnings about its frailty, what if the novel—long the linchpin of print culture—has finally died? It can happen; one day, it will happen. We novelists used to have the public by the nape of its collective neck, dependent on us for the lion’s share of its entertainment and enlightenment. Now, newer modes of communication compete with books for attention, and in the meanwhile attention spans of our friends and neighbors seem to have shortened, having been lulled into withering inaction by newer, less effortful forms such as TV and the Internet, and one day those, too, will be outmoded and curiously antique. (Maybe we will have transistors embedded in our brains that give us a certain pre-programmed experience; maybe we will be too exhausted by hiding from flesh-eating zombies to have time for any culture whatsoever.)
