The Novel as Revolutionary Instrument

I FIRST ENCOUNTERED Noah Kumin when I stumbled upon his manifesto-like salvo on Substack, “Why I Decided to Destroy Modernism, Part 1: A New Path Forward for the Literary Arts (My Ultimate Aim),” and the subsequent “How Did Literature Get So Stuck? Why I Decided to Destroy Modernism, Part 2.” The essays express Kumin’s dismay with contemporary literature in 2024, in particular its fixation on individual subjectivity, and lay out his ambition to usher in a new literary movement.