parallel lines

Is this a crypto-reactionary step backwards towards humanism, sentimentalism, positivism and the whole gamut of bad isms that the vanguard 20th-century novel expended so much effort overcoming – and, moreover, a step backwards enabled by some of that vanguard's own techniques? It's hard to say.

Tom McCarthy on Toussaint in the LRB. (If all reviews were like this, reports that print journalism is moribund would be grossly exaggerated.)