Citizen E mentions 2666, a case in point. Nine hundred meandering pages long, by a dead foreigner, 2666 was chosen by Time magazine as its Book of the Year. I promise you, that took guts. Dozens of critics came to its aid. The review I liked best was in O, where Vince Passaro urged his readers to make time for the book—if they could—because it would reward the effort. He didn't browbeat them with Bolano's "importance," or pull rank and announce that the thing was "necessary" or any of the usual crap that so irritates Lena McFarland (and me). The fact that Passaro didn't need to mount a world-historical case for Roberto Bolano, and was given a few inches to praise him anyhow, seemed wonderful to me. But I also understand it when a reviewer (or TV or radio producer) falls in love, seizes a tactical advantage, and persuades his or her boss to go all-in—even if that means the star treatment, or distracting claims about the Great American Novel. It's no substitute for a hundred independent reviews, but for now it will have to do.

For now.

I left book publishing to edit The Paris Review because I think the situation can be dramatically improved. Not in the high-stakes game of bestsellers and Time covers, but down here on the ground, where reputations and markets are built and readers make up their own minds. I want there to be a magazine where fiction and poetry come first, where there's no hype, and where the aim is to reach the 100,000 people who, a few years ago, had never heard of Roberto Bolano—but whose lives have been slightly changed by his fiction.

I am one of those people. For what it's worth, I have also been one of the people who say they don't like stories or poems. It wasn't actually true when I said it. (I suspect it's not true in general.) What annoys me is the idea that I should like a story or a poem, just because somebody took the trouble to write it. We are indeed competing for limited airspace. With apologies to Ezra Pound, a story or poem needs to be at least as involving as an expose by David Grann, as tough-minded as a comment by Hendrik Hertzberg. Which is to say, it must if possible be even better written.

Literary writing (or, if you prefer, imaginitive writing) has certain advantages of its own, none of them weakened one bit by technology. It can often be funnier than other kinds of prose. It can deal more humanly with sex. It can say shameful things about family life—not by treating them as scandals but, on the contrary, by showing that they're normal. More sins are confessed more deeply, through the screens of verse and make-believe, than you will ever find on a talk show or reality TV. Literature gives the best accounts of intimacy. Lena McFarland is right—you may not learn stuff you didn't know from a work of fiction. But there can be great comfort in seeing the troubles of daily life put into words of power and beauty.