Right, but you're talking about literature. I'm talking about stories in a broader, existential sense, about the fictive aspect of all our mental and linguistic representations.

Our concepts simplify, for instance, so there's no thought that does perfect justice to its referent. And our minds and personal selves are narrative identities we maintain just by thinking about ourselves. We identify not so much with our revolting brain but with the series of thoughts that flows in what seems like the abstract space of consciousness. Maybe that's just the brain shielding itself against the absurd wilderness with an ongoing narrative and with a protagonist (ego) with which it can identify.

Anyway, I agree that late-modern literature is problematic. For one thing, it's become woke and politically correct, and the romance and mystique of being a writer are largely gone.