What is the novel?

Definitions are limiting, but when somebody does put out one--of anything--then they also seem not so limiting, but quite inclusive.

Here is a definition of the novel, provided by William Deresiewicz:

The novel continues to do what it has always done best: compile the atlas of private experience, show us what it feels like to be alive at our particular time and place. Think of Goethe, Austen, Dostoyevsky, Proust. Fiction brings us the news of ourselves, as literature always has and always will. That’s “entertainment,” in its deepest and most satisfying form. That’s pleasure, meaning, passion, glimpses of profoundest truth, the salvation of art. “The Jungle” may have sparked reform, but I daresay “Mrs. Dalloway” has changed more people’s lives.