A perennial form

… A Scrappy Defense of the Novel - by John Wilson - Prufrock.  (Hat tip, Dave Lull)

The wildly heterogeneous nature of these books should serve as a reminder that accounts of “the novel,” even by gifted commentators, tend to be very partial—a cautionary note that’s underlined when I add that, early on, I read many novels in condensed form in the Reader’s Digest omnibus volumes we regularly received at home.