The Death of the Death of the Novel

"The Death of the Death of the Novel" (2008) is an essay by Robert Clark Young that first appeared in the Southern Review.
Summary
Young's thesis is that all arguments postulating the death of the novel are fallacious. Young goes back through literary history to show that F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Barth, Roland Barthes, Norman Mailer, Ambrose Bierce and others were incorrect when they claimed, at various times, that the literary novel was dead. Not only did literary novels continue to be published long after these writers announced the death of the novel, but many of the same writers, including Barth and Mailer, continued to publish literary novels—often to great acclaim—decades after arguing that continuing to do so was impossible.
Young also argues that new technologies such as radio, silent movies, talking movies, television, and the Internet have failed to destroy the novel, a genre which today enjoys higher sales than ever. With the advent of each of these new technologies, literary pessimists declared the death of the novel, and were wrong each and every time.
Critical reception
Rachel King, writing in "Good Reading Starts Here", said "I love the historical perspective Robert Clark Young emphasizes in his 'The Death of the Death of the Novel.' I've read about the death of the novel in essays from Barth to Birkerts, but Young has a compelling argument: although people have been predicting the novel's death for hundreds of years, somehow it keeps on flourishing. And it will continue to flourish, for reasons you will have to read yourself."
The Summerset Review agreed that "‘The Death of the Death of the Novel,’ by Robert Clark Young, sheds positive light on the health of the literary world, and is a comfort to read. The author argues that ‘the Internet and iPods and DVDs are not responsible for turning book publishing into a money loser,’ and that ‘American literature is not only alive but immortal.’"

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