When any novel is rediscovered and culturally elevated, part of the process is creative: The adoptive generation needs to be able to decide for themselves what the deeper theme is, and it needs to be something that wasn’t widely recognized by the preceding generation. In one hundred years, it’s possible that the contemporary novel best illustrating media alienation will be something like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, even though nobody makes that connection now. The defining 9/11 novel may end up being Infinite Jest, even though it was written five years before the actual event and has very
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