I don't know, I have read some very good and critically acclaimed books from the so called modernist period and I never thought they were particularly boring or

I don't know, I have read some very good and critically acclaimed books from the so called modernist period and I never thought they were particularly boring or lacking of plot. That includes the Great Gatsby which has a pretty good plot, and some hemingway books. Also my favorite authors like Nabakov, Heller, Vonnegut, PKD, Chandler, Hammet, etc. always had pretty interesting plots. They were not idiotic "made for tv plots" where every single conflict had to be neatly resolved by the end of the book, but they were interesting and absorbing. They were also very critically acclaimed. I think really the problem is that there is a subjanre of novels that emerged that is intended exclusively to be read as assignments in college classes. These tend to be incredibly boring, so that literature professors so that lit profs can justify their existence and because most readers are essentially forced to read them. If those types of books are dead, good riddance.