Those who claim the novel’s time has passed ignore its value. Nothing captures the quality of consciousness like fiction. Only a great novel can make you truly feel what it is like to be someone else, alive in a different place and time. Literature exercises our empathy, salves our loneliness, and helps us learn how to live. Without Flaubert, Balzac, Dostoyevski, and Joyce, our understanding of human psychology would be greatly impoverished.
What doesn’t really matter, though, is how people choose to read. Literature is important; the choice of paper or plastic is not.
(via Publishers Weekly: Literature, Plugged In)
