Katie Ritter asked Dave Schaafsma:

David, as a professor of English, a prolific reader, and a writer, you seem to be a good person to whom I can direct this question: given the rise of graphic novels (and Mood Publishing's Fall of Gods certainly raises the bar on those!) and what seems to be a desire for less thinking in general (else how on earth would fake news be believed?)....what's your opinoin on the long-term prognosis for epic novels?

Dave Schaafsma Robert Bolano and David Foster Wallace wrote really long novels. My wife just finished the fantasy series, many long books. Game of Thrones. But you were thinking Middlemarch and Dickens, maybe? People always talk about the death of the novel, but people seem to keep writing them, and long ones. And the complexity of graphic novels is increasing, too. I do think there are fewer readers of long books, maybe, but there will always be readers and publishers of these books, in my opinion. There's always people who want to think less, I suppose, and not read at all, but I am hopeful, nevertheless.

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