“Publishers lament that their margins are razor-thin and literary fiction doesn’t sell and the days of big advances are long gone. But guess what? They’re rolling in cash. They’re splashing it about like it’s 1989. What recession? What Twitter? What video games? They are longing, desperately longing, not just for the next sado-eccliasto-vampire pulp, but for a certain kind of old-fashioned sociopolitical Big Novel. And betting on it.”