The question any novel is really trying to answer is, Is life worth living

The question any novel is really trying to answer is, Is life worth living? presents the novel’s deepest concern as an open question about life itself. Printed near the beginning of the book alongside a reference to Nicholson Baker’s interview in The Paris Review, the expression frames what follows as an inquiry whose central problem is easier to pose than to settle.

Form and Context

The expression is phrased as a question about what novels are trying to answer. Its wording makes the question—not a particular conclusion—the point of emphasis: a novel is cast as an attempt to engage the value of living, without the line claiming that every novel answers in the same way or reaches a final verdict. The question’s directness gives it the force of a threshold statement, establishing an existential frame before the narrative begins.

Attribution and Significance

The line appears with the citation Nicholson Baker, “The Art of Fiction No. 212,” The Paris Review. This placement associates the formulation with a discussion of fiction and gives the opening inquiry a literary-critical context. Its significance lies in the tension between the scale of its subject and the modesty of its form: it asks whether life is worth living, while leaving the answer open to the novels—and readers—that take up the question.