The novel has lost its purpose Joseph Bottum argues in this fascinating new look at the history of fiction. We have not transcended our need for what novels provide but we have grown to distrust the culture that allowed novels to flourish. For almost three hundred years Bottum writes the novel was a major art form perhaps the major art form of the modern worldthe device by which more than any other we tried to explain ourselves to ourselves. But now we no longer read novels the way we used to.