There's nothing like an existential crisis writ large. For evidence, take a look at the recent debate regarding the future of the short story, whose primary adherents seem to fear imminent extinction. In the New York Times review, Stephen King spells out his pain at the genre's decline in sales:

"Once, in the days of the old Saturday Evening Post, short fiction was a stadium act; now it can barely fill a coffeehouse and often performs in the company of nothing more than an acoustic guitar and a mouth organ. If the stories feel airless, why not? When circulation falters, the air in the room gets stale ... let us consider what the bottom shelf does to writers who still care, sometimes passionately, about the short story. What happens when he or she realises that his or her audience is shrinking almost daily?"

In a tete-a-tete on Cif, Julian Gough squared off with John Crace about the short-story's current problems. Gough argued against constructing a false dichotomy out of the short story and the novel, suggesting that "the relationship is much more complicated and interesting, and the membrane between them more permeable". He goes on to write that many novels are actually a collection of stories set around an "organising principle", citing David Mitchell as an example. And, he reminds us, some of the best and most successful books in history - the Bible, Canterbury Tales, Arabian Nights - follow the same system.

In response, John Crace seems to misinterpret Gough by wrongly attributing to him the idea that novels should hinge on one single idea, which is very different from Gough's discussion of an "organising principle". But it's worth considering the point none the less. Crace is right to chastise the endless quest to write the definitive 9/11 novel, but his scorn at Everyman by Philip Roth ("[it] revolved entirely around the notion that getting old is a bit of a bummer") is shocking. Everyman is indeed a short and brilliant novel about dying. But if death isn't a suitable idea to focus a novel on, then one wonders what is. Unfortunately, like so many contemporary critics, Crace is overly concerned with plotting: "It's the writing and characterisation that carries the reader."

Thus runs the debate so far. Gough is right to say that the short story and the novel aren't siblings squabbling over the birthright, but perhaps he doesn't go far enough. Comparing the short story and the novel is like comparing football and rugby. They're both literary forms, but totally different ones, and certainly not in direct competition. The classic misconception of the novel is that it is defined by being a long story. It may be trite, but the word novel - literally meaning new - implies nothing of the sort.

I truly believe that to read a novel for the plot is to miss the point, a suggestion that was met with incredulity by readers outraged by my "outing" of the plot of On Chesil Beach. And this is where I disagree with Crace. The quality of a short story is primarily determined by narrative, plot, and flow. As Nathan Zuckerman puts it, "condensation and reduction". But it would be a mistake to label these the central concerns of a novel. The novel - at its best - is driven by ideas, by the realisation that the most important ideas can only be explained and particularised through the fiction provided by the medium of novel. Believe it or not, plotting is often secondary to this.

I'm aware that this is mildly controversial territory. Just think back to the reaction to John Banville winning the Booker Prize for The Sea, a novel in which very little happens indeed. The controversy was all the more stark because he was up against Zadie Smith (for On Beauty), an author famously described by James Wood as a disciple of "hysterical realism" for the constant action and frenetic pace of her first two novels (On Beauty attempts a more sober approach, but is still rather jam-packed). In our obsession for a great story, we often miss the artistic genius of a writer such as Banville, who through unsurpassable prose is able to absorb us in the inner-lives of his protagonists. He reminds us that in the best modern novel nothing much need happen at all.

So Julian Gough is absolutely correct in dismissing the idea that the short story and the novel are "mutually exclusive" and in conflict. As the sales figures suggest, he's also right to fear over the short story's future. If I were to offer him some advice, I would suggest that reading a short story collection can often feel bitty and unsatisfying, but that this isn't always due to the lack of an organising principle. Rather, it's the failure of the form's adherents to emphasise the importance of the oral tradition, of the centrality of the story to our lives. Perhaps it's about the form in which the stories are delivered, and maybe a book-length collection is no longer the best way to do so; street-corner deliveries or audio-downloads might be better. Stories are there to be told, novels to be considered.

Because what Gough fails to point out is that none of his examples of a great book built around an "organised principle" is actually a novel. There need be no beef here; those bemoaning the future of the short story should perhaps look inward before blaming it all on the mythical big brother embodied by the novel.