it's quite clear to me that the author, and peers of the article dont get out enough. the issue is not the decline of literary fiction, it is rather the fact of fiction it lself is no longer possible, which is quite evident when listening to the surreal, harrowing, epic tales to be told by the people all around the edges, haltingly, and reluctantly told, but everywhere. we no longer live in a "golden age" where we can mull over the causes and effects of human lives lived large and bold, as the inescapable reality is serving you coffee, in a 3d printed sci-fi setting, the furnishings hard, the light eminating from an incomprehensable device operating at frequencys absent from any literary narative, a high whine wavering beween revelation and impending doom, more in line with some mythical description of the advent of deamons and spirits than anything a civilised and literate culture would ever allude to. Cervantes and Hobbs stand as proxy's for two possible paths, Hobbs bieng the overwheming choice, all of the impossible to reconcile inconsistansies, simply ommited from our narative, and twisted into a booming(pun.acknowedged) busniess of exporting our conradictions.