Here the past, yet again, proves valuable. In 1898 Tolstoy defined art as “that human activity which consists in one man’s consciously conveying to others by certain external signs the feelings he has experienced, and in others being infected by those feelings and also experiencing them.” This is communion, which is also catharsis—art as exercise for the empathetic muscles that define us as human. If the novel has ceded ground to other entertainments, it maintains a distinct and formal advantage in the realm of communion.