Ups and Downs of Reading an Article

I read the question in my email that spurned the article Is the Novel Dead? by Cynthia Crossen in the WSJ yesterday (here). The question was: Occasionally I read about the "death of the novel." It doesn't look like the novel is dead to me. Does it to you?

Ho hum was my immediate reaction. Kind of a silly question don't you think? But then I thought to myself, so many of the questions that are used to generate articles seem silly at first . . . I'll go give it a try. So I did. I saw the graphic that showed a 1950's era poster for an H.G. Well's novel and my heart rate quickened. It slowed the further I read.

The article was about as ho hum as the article generating question, but it did provide fodder for this article. After reading it I thought about a class I had my freshman year of college, The 20th Century Novel. It wasn't a bad class. Not great, but not bad. When the professor asked us what we would do for future classes I thought it would be interesting to breakup the topic into subjects.

Subjects such as: 20th Century Romances, 20th Century Novels on War, Mystery Novels through the 20th Century, Sci-Fi Novels in the 20th Century, etc. I think any of these would make for a far more interesting class than just 20th Century novels.

By my senior year I found myself in a Charles Dickens class. lt was fun. Bleak House, Great Expectations, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist and more. Still, I think my idea had legs and wonder if some Aggie (or Maggie) isn't right now sitting in a Sci-Fi Novels in the 20th Century class and writing about the similarities between Vernor Vinge and Isaac Asimov. What fun!