The end is nigh

From Waiting for the End by Leslie A. Fiedler (1964):

Perhaps narrative will not continue much longer to be entrusted to print and bound between hard covers. But this does not especially dismay me, since I have no special affection for the novel as such: this fat, solid commodity invented by the bourgeoisie for the ends of commerce and culture-climbing. There is always the screen, if the page proves no longer viable: the neighbourhood movie, the drive-in, or the parlour television set. And I presume that if cinema eventually becomes a lost art, too, there will always be some of us scratching pictographs on the walls of caves, or telling each other stories over bonfies made of the last historical romance hailed as the novel of the year in the last book review section of the last New York Times.