Is Fiction Changing, for Better or Worse?

Jane Smiley, author, "Private Life" Reading fiction is and always was about learning to see the world through often quite alien perspectives. This remains essential. Matt de la Peña, author, "Mexican WhiteBoy" Kafka believed a book should wake us up with a blow to the head. But we don’t want our novels to do that anymore. Robin Sloan, writer and media inventor New and maturing media are not a threat to the novel, but a reminder of why it has endured. Thomas Glave, author, "The Torturer's Wife" The ways in which we respond to the work of art in