Distant Visions: Putdownable Prose and the State of the Art-Novel
It’s worth asking why visionary power, so central to earlier generations of leading literary artists, has lost its footing in literary culture, only to be replaced by something closer to good first-person reportage. Perhaps it’s because we’ve lost belief in the critical importance of transformation through art, and have relegated it to just one of many equally worthy rewards a book can offer.
Mark de Silva explores the fundamental dilemmas of contemporary fiction.