a preference for diachronic, narrative description of human life predominates in contemporary culture

most of this ambition seems to have been expended in the enumeration of appurtenances common to luxury condos in Manhattan

This leaves me with the thought that the problem and possibilities of the contemporary social novel are not exclusively tied to genre—i.e., they are not the classical problems of the novel, per se. They aren’t exactly the problems and possibilities offered by the familiar challenge of maintaining a balance between action and description (famously described by György Lukács in his rants on the political efficacy of realist prose). There’s something challenging in this unfamiliar territory but also something hopeful, not just because we seem still to like novels, but because it’s clear that literature can contribute, in a significant way, to contemporary events. And where literature can help is in its combinatory and experimental capacities. Novelists can do things and try things that academics and critics cannot. So I am advocating for that now. Let’s have more social novels that explore the disruption and near-impossibility of our cherished narrative forms. Let’s have more social novels that look for narrative—and even fail to find it. In their spectacular and detailed failure, such novels may more closely resemble us.