Reference no: EM131842724

Identify the logical fallacies.

As a lover of literature, I must respond critically to your editorial of November 13, "This Time the Novel is REALLY Dead." In it you claim that the social role of the novel is so miniscule as to not matter at all. And you claim that government-funded programs designed to encourage the reading of serious literature should be eliminated. Allow me to reply to these arguments directly and briefly support my claim that the novel is very much alive.

First of all, you claim that the novel's death is proven by the fact that no truly great novels have been written in the last five years. This is simply untrue. As a reader of many contemporary novels, I can tell you that different authors have produced several outstanding works of literature in the last two years alone (Beth Linstrom's Desiring Nowhereand Olaf Timon's All the Traveling Salesmen come to mind). But you need not rely just on my word. Any true fan of literature will tell you that we live in a time ripe with great fiction.

Your second argument, that serious literature is no longer needed, is equally weak. You claim that in the digital information age, novels have outworn their social usefulness. But many people who read serious fiction are sympathetic, compassionate, and perceptive. We need these character traits more than ever, and it is reading literature that makes these people sympathetic and compassionate. I must also mention that The National Authors Association was unfairly maligned in your piece. You claimed that it is an outdated professional society that no one, least of all the reading public, cares about. I found this utterly baffling, as it is beloved by most of the reading public. This is evidently true, since the reading public loves all the authors who belong to the association. Finally, I will refute your remaining arguments from the editorial of November 13 by reminding you that only last year this very newspaper published an editorial singing the praises of the novel and declaring it very much alive!

Let me now move on to my own case for why the novel is not dead, and why we should maintain government-funded programs for boosting readership of literature. Regarding the latter, we must continue supporting these programs for a very simple reason. If people stop reading literature, the next thing you know, they will stop reading at all. Then we will regress as a civilization to a postliterate society, unable to communicate with the written word. Eliminate these programs and soon that is what we will have on our hands. But literature is not just about keeping the populace literate; it is also about enhancing self-knowledge. The argument for this is simple and powerful: reading literature is a mind-expanding activity. Coming to know your deepest inner self is a mind-expanding activity. So reading literature is coming to know yourself.

Consider also that our nation's most financially successful people are readers-people who read literature daily. You might doubt that, but consider that some people who read serious fiction on a daily basis are highly intelligent people, and of course, more than a few highly intelligent people are among the wealthiest people in this country. It obviously follows that a few of the wealthiest people in the country read serious fiction daily.

Let us hope that this whole idea of the "death of the novel" will itself die soon. Frankly, it is hard to believe that a journalistic institution like this paper would ever promote such a view, given the fact that it first emerged in such artistically tumultuous times as the early twentieth century. Since you, the editors of this journal, seem to take the digital information age so seriously, let me leave you with an important piece of evidence for the novel being very much alive. If Amazon were to stop selling novels, then the novel would be dead. But Amazon is still selling novels, so the novel is not dead.