Fiction's Future: Words, Sentences, Quotes

Page 4 American Book Review In a word? Dismal (for literary fiction, that is). —Lee K. Abbott Liquidity, expansion, cultural multiplicity, fusion, faction. —DiAnA Abu-JAber The first word that comes to mind is “electronics” as in the lyrics to “Electronic Performers” from the French avant-pop band Air: We are the synchronizers Send messages through time code Midi clock rings in my mind Machines gave me some freedom Synthesizers gave me some wings They drop me through twelve bit samplers We are electronic performers We are electronics. —MArK AMeriKA My only expertise on the future of fiction is the potential next novel circulating in my head. Outside of that, recent evidence suggests that the most interesting future of fiction will be featured in small independent presses. —JonAthAn bAuMbAch Always relevant, always necessary, not on the verge of death, but the pasture is steadily getting more crowded with other options, and people do not have more time. —AiMee benDer The future of fiction is a fairy tale. —KAte bernheiMer I’m inclined to reply with a URL: http://www.theonion.com/content/news/ novelists_strike_fails_to_affect. —MichAeL bérubé Neural. —Stephen J. burn The landscape of fiction will increasingly resemble that of poetry in its variety of forms and traditions. —tereSA cArMoDy The future of fiction may lie in some combination of hypertextuality, intertextuality , and video, but if so, it will have to do without me. Of course, it will ultimately have to do without me no matter what direction it goes in, so at this point I’m not very invested in the question. But I believe that no matter what fiction will continue to be interested in character and language. How otherwise? —KeLLy cherry The printing press, along with most physical apparati of analog human communication, is now a museum relic. For the rising generations, the digital revolution is no novelty but simply the world into which they were born (new technologies create new audiences; they may even rewire the young brains that grow up on them). That revolution would seem to be irresistible and irreversible, the medium of choice (or perhaps choice is not even a factor) for the new generations, meaning that, if literature is to survive and continue to be a force in human lives, it will have to go there, speak to that audience. The novel’s future in this new expressive arena, impatient with extensive works in monomedia, would seem to be somewhat bleak, but if the notion of the “novel” be expanded to include all complex and lengthy narrative literature, there is no reason to suppose that storytelling, sometimes held to be that which, after language itself, most centrally defines humanity, will not eventually move as readily from page to computer screen, or its future equivalents, as it once moved from oral tale-tellers to clay tablets to scroll to codex to printed book. —robert coover Our desire to read stories will never die, I’m sure, and the most traditional forms of fiction will probably continue indefinitely; but alongside these traditional forms, I’m convinced, other forms will keep emerging, as they are emerging now, some of them quite impossible to predict. —LyDiA DAviS I see fiction’s future as strong in the coming years: in tough times, people turn more than ever to stories, which tell the truth aslant and cleanse us through catharsis, and novels are still the least expensive and most meaningful way to travel the world. —chitrA bAnerJee DivAKAruni I don’t know how we’ll be reading and writing our stories—on our iPhones, computers, Kindles, or in or on whatever other technological miracle is in the offing—but we will be reading and writing stories. We need them to make sense of our lives and of our world. Lack of narrative sense leads to anxiety, and anxiety leads to damage. We have to tell our stories; we have to see our lives reflected in stories. Our fiction will certainly reflect the social networking, cyber culture we’re living in because that culture is shaping us. (I still don’t read anything online longer than a paragraph. Does that mean that electronically published stories will become shorter? Or...