The novelist writes about the coming end...

[myster_jones]

The novelist writes about the coming end in order to warn about present ills and so avert the end....[but he] is less like a prophet than he is like the canary that coal miners used to take down into the shaft to test the air. When the canary gets unhappy, utters plaintive cries, and collapses, it may be time for the miners to surface and think things over...”

-Walker Percy from “Notes for a Novel About the End of the World”