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At one time, there may have been room enough for only one kind of novel at a time. But that time was probably even before Robbe-Grillet, whose "The Voyeur" captivated me for years with its cinematic use of scene and revisitation of scene, its ambiguity in the midst of clarity, its presaging of video techniques and pharmaceutically-dazed culture. The unblinking eye of the seagull was a camera lens and a reflection of amorality among many other things. Far from killing the novel or limiting the scope of what the novel could be, Robbe-Grillet juxtaposed artistic writing with the art of other media of the time.
Sure there is a resurgence of 19th-century sensibility in literature today; call it fin-de-siecle, or just borrowing from the past. Styles ebb and flow, but there's always room for more.
To call Robbe-Grillet's work "easy to produce" smacks of pure petty jealousy. Writers have always walked the tight-rope between art and pop culture and they will continue to do so. Nabokov gained an audience with Lolita, but lost it with Ada, a difficult but beautiful work. The big picture right now is that there is no big picture. Soon a new paradigm will emerge and engulf an entire generation of artists. The contrarians will counter, as they do. And then at the end of another century, another critic will say it's all dead and will refuse to weep at the funeral. But then again, why mourn? A novelist may have died, but the novel is still in my hands.
