This essay is from the new collection The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books, co-edited by Jeff Martin and C. Max Magee, of The Millions. In the book, Jonathan Lethem, Rivka Galchen, Nancy Jo Sales and many others consider the landscape as the literary world faces a sudden change in the way we buy, produce and read books.

Say it was 1910, and say on a breezy day you stopped me on Broadway, and say you asked me: “Sir, whither American letters?”

And say that the answer I gave you was fantastically correct. Say I predicted all about Modernism. Say I advised you to [...]