I don't mind you thinking me a scaremonger. Scaremongering has a respectable history. The fact that we're still here after so many prophecies of doom doesn't, to my mind, prove the prophets were mistaken – only that the worst hasn't happened yet. That state of savage torpor, for example, into which Wordsworth saw the discriminating powers of our mind descending – did he get that so wrong? Wrong about the torpid, maybe. We are too hectic to be torpid. We troll, wear trainers and fulminate. But is savage so wide of the mark? Wordsworth was describing what made his age unpropitious to poetry. Need I state what makes our age unpropitious to the novel?The rival calls on our time and attention. The infinite distractions of the Jumpin' Jack Flash screen, so deceptively alluring compared to the nun-like stillness of the page, whose black marks you can neither scroll…
