In defending the role of literary fiction in early twenty-first century culture, James Bradley argues that 'in a society that values only questions with pre-ordained answers, literary fiction is, gloriously and deliberately, a question that refuses to answer itself.' Bradley's belief is that if we dismiss literary fiction 'we will have lost one of the few places we have left where we may glimpse something of the strangeness and irreducibility of our inner lives, and where we may, if only momentarily, see past the vision of our lives and their meaning our society offers us, and be free'.

Matthew Kelly argues the opposite case in 'The Fuss Over Super-Fine Fiction : Books Need Buyers'.