From the Archives: Part 40 of The Self and its Sources

The novel is a chronicle of the collapse of transcendence in the modern world and the rise of internal mediation.
Ortega y Gasset:

“When we are fascinated by a novel it is not because we a curious to know what happened to Mr. So-and –So. The subject of any novel can be told in a few words and in this form holds no interest. We want the novelist to linger and to grant us good long looks at his personages, their being and their environment until we have had our fill. The interest in the outer mechanisms of the plot is today reduced to a minimum. All the better. The novel must now revolve around the superior interest emanating from the inner mechanism of the personages.”