The Extent of Our Decline

I'm grateful to Matt Bell for including my essay, "The Extent of Our Decline," in January's issue of The Collagist, their 18th issue and a very good one, full of very good stories and poems and reviews. My contribution takes on Tom Junod and David Shields and their rather silly shared notion that "the" novel can no longer capture the essence of our epoch.

Here is a link to the essay, which will also appear the anthology The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books, edited by C. Max Magee, of The Millions, and Jeff Martin, of this. The anthology appears in March of this year and features a whole slew of names I won't list, but rest assured are far more impressive than my own. Enjoy them all. Enjoy enjoying them. Enjoy everything.