Gary Shteyngart is getting plenty of good attention this spring for his new novel, "Lake Success." But remember this one, from 2010, "Super Sad True Love Story?" 

This novel was a comedic take on an alternate near-future world, in which people eschew face-to-face interaction in favor of communicating on personal electronic devices (apparats, with umlauts over all three as, if you please). People become "media" stars, making their living by broadcasting themselves doing pretty much anything online. The United States' economy is collapsing, and society is at the mercy of money or resource-holding countries such as Norway and China. 

Here's one detail that didn't strike me as so prescient when I first read the novel but now is screaming out at me: The U.S., in this novel, has a broken government and is losing an ill-advised, unpopular war in -- wait for it -- Venezuela. 

Let's not go there.

-cg

An old article "Has plot driven out other kinds of story?" http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jul/14/plot-driven-out-other-kinds-story has asked this question. 

As readers we all worry that the biggest money making for book writer is to have their books sold as potential movies. And if the book really turned into movies that did not suck, it would in turn drive sales of their books.

For very literary work, this might not translate as well onto screen.  There might not be any plot that drive the story.

For me, it is more difficult to read work that is not plot driven, but that's probably where the skill of writing that turned into art form, for appreciation of the beauty of words joined together instead of having likable central characters and things that happen to them.

In order to support these form of literature, the publishing has to think not only of sales and markets, but on the values of books as a form of art.