Has plot driven out other kinds of story?

"I often wonder if relentless focus on plot is edging something of value out of our literary culture. Creative writing students are frequently told to "show not tell", to "get into the scene early", and make sure their characters are never without motivation. All great advice, except it doesn't really reflect the way life is. Would-be novelists must submit three chapters and a synopsis of their manuscripts to the literary agents or publishers they approach: if these fail to "hook" early on they will almost certainly be rejected. So what would happen to Nausea, The Unnamable,In Search of Lost Time, or, God forbid, Finnegans Wake? I recently attended a talk where a leading London literary agent stated that, in his opinion, it is highly unlikely that Kafka would get published as a first-time writer today. Of course there's no way this can be verified, but if true it's a pretty sorry state of affairs.

There are always exceptions to the rule, and the popularity of David Mitchell and Roberto Bolano is encouraging, as was the excitement around the publication of David Foster Wallace's The Pale King earlier this year and Tom McCarthy's shortlisting for the 2010 Booker prize for C. McCarthy has said that "it seems to me that a lot of contemporary writers are shirking their duty to deal with the legacy of modernism and that many of them don´t care". Art has occupied the experimental space that literature did in the 1920s, "maybe because writing is too commercial". In order to be read widely, writers must go through the major publishers who are beholden to their shareholders, and therefore to market forces. What gets published, in other words, must please as broad a swathe of the market as possible."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jul/14/plot-driven-out-other-kinds-story