Further to this post, here's a thought from Don DeLillo:
Before he leaves, DeLillo makes an impassioned case for the continuing significance of the novel. "It is the form that allows a writer the greatest opportunity to explore human experience," he says. "For that reason, reading a novel is potentially a significant act. Because there are so many varieties of human experience, so many kinds of interaction between humans, and so many ways of creating patterns in the novel that can't be created in a short story, a play, a poem or a movie. The novel, simply, offers more opportunities for a reader to understand the world better, including the world of artistic creation. That sounds pretty grand, but I think it's true."
It's sort of true. Obviously there are other modes of understanding than are to be got from the novel and which philosophy, the human sciences and the natural sciences help us towards. Still, what DeLillo says is true enough and better than David Shields's view.