The seven bad-humored and unfunny devils who eat ourselves and our narratives alive are Pretentiousness, Pomposity, Presumption, Pontificality, Pavon… - R. A. Lafferty

This petty place cannot be Hell, Roadstrum? Ah, but it is my friend. That, you see, is the hell of it.

Oh, I cannot abide these complacent clods," I exclaim. "I cannot relate to these opulent oafs who are laughing in the streets. They are not high enough or low enough. For my love I must find the poor, the deprived, the fornicators, the addicts, the drunkards, the unwashed, ...

The art of story-telling has not been declining from the beginning. It has been declining for only about twelve thousand years. One reason for the decline is a dietary deficiency: the scarcity of Wooly Rhinoceros Meat and of Dire Wolf Meat. And the other reason is the disappearance of good places where good stories may be told.