[I]t is sometimes pleasant to stone a martyr, no matter how much we may admire him. - John Barth

The ascendancy of the novel is historically associated with the ascendancy of the middle class and the spread of general literacy, and those in turn, in the West at least, with the development of the institutions of liberal democracy and the civil state. […] No doubt I am being both biased and superstitious, but because of that historical connection I think of the novel (and, by extension, of general literacy) as a canary in the coal mines of democratic civil society. […] If this particular canary really does go belly-up, I'm old-fashioned enough to fear for the general civic air.

'Tis e'er the wont of simple folk to prize the deed and o'erlook the motive, and of learned folk to discount the deed and lay open the soul of the doer.

[N]othing is intrinsically valuable; the value of everything is attributed to it, assigned to it, from outside, by people.