Pushback for David Brooks
Rebecca Peace of beckyonbooks sent me a link to review Ann Patchett’s response to David Brooks’ column, which I pointed out in my last blog post. If you don’t want to click and read the entire short spot here, just know that she completely disagrees with Brooks and sites book after book that she thinks is important, edgy and certainly important and timely literature. In another feature, I will go through a few of the books Patchett used to prove her point. Look at the video and see what you think.
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In addition to Patchett’s response, several NYT readers responded as featured below:
Exerpts from the NYT, July 9, 2025
LETTERS
Has the Death of the Novel Been Greatly Exaggerated?
Readers respond to a column by David Brooks.
July 19, 2025
To the Editor:
Re “The Decline of Great Novels,” by David Brooks (column, July 13):
I’m a novelist in my 20s, squarely in the cohort of writers that Mr. Brooks claims are conformists afraid to truly express their thoughts on the page. This is an interesting idea. Can one make art if one is scared to tell the truth? I’d argue not, obviously. I would not be interested in reading or writing a book that conforms in any way. I strongly believe that one should make art only if one is not afraid to be bold.
Unlike Mr. Brooks, I think there are plenty of gifted young writers who are working on bold, uncomfortable and groundbreaking novels. In fact, some of them were in my M.F.A. program, which Mr. Brooks seems to think is the height of conformity.
Mr. Brooks is not wrong to suggest that the reasons there are no literary superstars today à la Saul Bellow and Philip Roth are shorter attention spans and more time on screens. But to suggest that there are no literary superstars because there aren’t any young writers willing to be innovative on the page because of their perceived politics could not be further from the truth.
Sophie Kemp
Brooklyn
To the Editor:
David Brooks argues that novels no longer have the same cultural importance they once had. I think this is true, but it illustrates a change that has taken place often in the past and is usually not recognized until much later.T
In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, literary reputations were made with long narrative poems like Spenser’s “Faerie Queene,” Marlowe’s “Hero and Leander” and Shakespeare’s “Rape of Lucrece” and with sonnet sequences. It took more than a century for people to recognize that stage plays — popular literature written to make money — were the greatest works of the period.
In the 19th century, French critics wondered when the Great Romantic Drama would be produced, oblivious to the fact that the great art form of the period was all around them: the novel. And all of the debates of the 20th century about what could claim to be the Great American Novel missed that the most significant art form of the century was film, while great artists like John Ford and Alfred Hitchcock were dismissed by many Americans as popular culture.
Stay tuned for more information about the novels mentioned by Ann Patchett!!