Dale Peck on the decline of modern writing: “Even allowing for the fact that any living literary community produces its fair share of James Fenimore Coopers and Pearl S. Bucks and Henry Millers and that it takes time to separate the chaff from the wheat; and even taking into consideration the theory that cinematic and virtual media have displaced the printed word as the dominant narrative forms, and that the novel and its grown-too-big-for-its-britches sibling, the memoir, are only occasionally profitable anachronisms; and even recognizing that literacy standards and technological advances have made it theoretically feasible for just about anyone to write and publish a book–even considering all these factors, the number of Stepford novels that are written, published, reviewed, and read every year is completely out of control.”