Plot is back

Author Lev Grossman talks about plot. Literary novels often turned away from the straightforward concerns of storytelling; writing became what was good for you, rather than what you enjoyed. Maybe things are changing?

LG: It's not easy to put your finger on what exactly is so disgraceful about our attachment to storyline. Sure, it's something to do with high and low and genres and the canon and such. But what exactly? Part of the problem is that to find the reason you have to dig down a ways, down into the murky history of the novel. There was once a reason for turning away from plot, but that rationale has outlived its usefulness. If there's a key to what the 21st-century novel is going to look like, this is it: the ongoing exoneration and rehabilitation of plot... More.