"We work in the dark — we do what we can — we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art."

Wrote Henry James, quoted by retired book editor Gerald Howard, in "The Dogged, Irrational Persistence of Literary Fiction" (NYT).

Howard writes: "Substack essays and chin-pulling opinion articles galore agree that literature is not only in the doldrums, but even in danger of extinction from, take your pick, a declining attention span, a disappearing audience of people educated enough to understand and appreciate it, or a near-future technological onslaught (see: novels written by A.I. entities). The sense of a possible ending is palpable. But what the discourse leaves out are things like historical perspective and the blind faith and, from the purely practical and economic points of view, sheer illogic of the literary enterprise...."