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Literature is not dying, but regenerating. Photograph: Ho New/Reuters
Literature is not dying, but regenerating. Photograph: Ho New/Reuters

Why Lee Siegel is wrong to declare the novel dead

This article is more than 13 years old
The US critic's attack on the novel does us good, but history will view this as a golden age of English language creativity

Every few years, some columnist in Britain or America pops up to declare the novel dead, or at the very least in the ICU.

From memory, the last time anyone in the UK got any traction from flogging this elderly nag was in 2001 when Andrew Marr told readers of the Observer that the novel was deader than a dozen doornails. Sure enough, the ensuing debate ran on for days.

Now, this seasonal ritual has been revived by the US critic Lee Siegel, writing in the New York Observer. Contemporary fiction, says Siegel, has become "a museum piece genre". The real creative energy today lies with non-fiction.

Siegel and his editors will have been delighted at the ink generated by this unexceptional opinion. In the US, from the LA Times to the Huffington Post, everyone has weighed in. The last time this topic was so comprehensively ventilated was in 2003, when Harold Bloom denounced Stephen King as unworthy of a National Book Foundation award.

The New Yorker, which provoked this latest row by publishing a "20 under 40" list of new writers, will be doubtless delighted. But once the dust has settled, and the protagonists have gone back to their foxholes, we are left with that overwhelming question: is it true?

There can be no definitive answer, but these, I think, are the factors that make Siegel's provocative intervention pertinent.

First, there's no doubt that literary culture in the US is going through lean times. Newspaper coverage of books no longer sets the cultural agenda in the way it did as recently as 15 years ago.

As a corollary, second, literary publishers are feeling the pinch. Ignored by the mainstream media, and squeezed commercially by the innovations of the IT revolution, traditional book publishers are beginning to show signs of losing confidence in their vocation. Most of the editors I know in New York have no appetite for curating a "museum-piece genre", but they are being forced to confront the inconvenient truth that "literary fiction" is not the headline grabber it was.

Third, this is self-evidently a transitional moment. Last week saw the death of one of Britain's contemporary greats, Beryl Bainbridge, at the age of 75. In the US, too, several big names have left the stage (Bellow, Vonnegut, Updike, Styron) and others are showing their age (Roth, Wolfe). The next generation has yet to fill that gap. Additionally, the new kids on the block (the New Yorker's "20 under 40") are not as unequivocally the product of the Anglo-American literary hegemony as in the past. Like the language, the culture has gone "Globish". It will take a while for these new voices to establish a presence in the marketplace.

Fourth: in contrast to the uncertainties surrounding new fiction, non-fiction is booming, in magazine and book form. Novels no longer excite so much interest. The public appetite for storytelling is amply satisfied by the film and television industry. Pace Siegel, this has been true for some years now.

Fifth, many critics and readers have lost patience with "the literary novel", which for so long hogged the headlines, backed up by prestigious prizes such as the Man Booker and the PEN/Faulkner. Part of what Siegel is exhibiting is a general audience weariness with a once-dominant genre.

Sixth, the worldwide recession undoubtedly sponsors thoughts of a cultural downturn, too.

Seventh, it never does any harm to confront an orthodoxy. Novelists deserve to be challenged about their art. This latest salvo will soon be forgotten in the onrush of the next season's publications. The minute a really good new novel appears on the scene, Siegel's comments will evaporate like morning mist.

Moreover, against Siegel, there is the evidence of the book trade itself. In the UK, literary festivals, many of which are devoted to new fiction, are booming. In the US, book stores are crowded with an extraordinary proliferation of new fiction (of all sorts). I recently spent a week immersed in the book culture of the east coast. Nothing less like a "museum" could be imagined. There was, if anything, an embarrassment of riches. Not all of it, by any means, is good, but if there are legitimate doubts about the quality, there's no mistaking the width. Never mind the state of the novel: writing programmes across the US are generating an extraordinary explosion of new fiction of all sorts.

In conclusion, I will repeat what I've said before: from many points of view, this is a golden age of English language creativity, a bonanza of new writing. I firmly believe that commentators will look back at this last decade and marvel at the range and variety of the stories we told ourselves.

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