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Does the Novel Have a Future? The Answer Is In This Essay! by Tao Lin | The New York Observer ↪

Thinking of novels in this manner, I feel more receptive to the world of noumenon. I feel closer both to nothingness—to the oneness—and to other humans. I feel less pressured to consider, engage with or respond to the development or advancement of the novel than to undistractedly view each possible novel as uniquely occupying an area on something spherical (like how humans on a round Earth don’t feel able to “advance” by walking in the correct direction, unlike they would in a side-scrolling video game or flat world, unless they’ve self-defined a goal like to live in Manhattan, but are required to be “productive” in other ways), where, though, as conscious beings with urges created by evolution, the default mode of perception is to distort it into a line, to discern an illusion of progress or direction. But if art is anything, then it is, to me, that which is created in the attempted absence of illusions, that which doesn’t instruct because its creator while creating it doesn’t know what’s good or bad, only that he/she wants to convey something.