The fundamental truths of fiction

ONCE A YEAR, IN A TRADITION that now stretches back many decades, the editors of the world’s largest cultural magazines gather in a dimly-lit room at a secret location. The reason for their clandestine meeting is to choose among themselves who, that year, gets to write the highly coveted annual scarepiece about the death of the novel. In 1965, it was Frank Kermode for the New York Review. In 2008, it was Allan Massie for the Spectator. In 2014, it was Will Self for the Guardian. Each time, the final combination is decided by drawing names from a hat — and, once writer and rag are picked, the editors sign in blood and usher in the night’s depraved entertainment.

I jest, but there is something comical about the atomic clock regularity with which these articles seem to pop up. I guess in a culture that values cynicism as one of the highest intellectual virtues, pronouncing the novel dead is, for the aspiring grump, a dead-cert way to demonstrate a certain kind of weary, cigarettes-and-spirits sophistication.

But let’s be honest — it’s unlikely, having already survived several journalistic assassination attempts, that the novel will suddenly