Q16

[slimz89]

I thought this was an interesting question because generally you would look to the end of the passage for the main point. But in this case it actually in the first paragraph lines 45-47.
The lsat writers were nice enough to put the most attractive wrong answer second.

[christine.defenbaugh]

I agree that it's a very interesting passage, slimz89!

The distillation of a main point is something we generally want to try to synthesize from multiple parts of the passage at once. However, you're completely correct that often times there's one particular sentence that serves as the lynchpin for the rest of the structure of the passage.

Such lynchpins may come at the end of a passage, but it's actually not at all uncommon for them to appear, as this one does, in the middle of a passage (as the last sentence of the first half, or the first sentence of the second half). This position allows the point to serve as an anchor between two viewpoints that are being contrasted, as here, the narrative model (paragraph 1) and the novelistic model (paragraph 2) are.

And yes, this matches up perfectly with (A)!

Let's take a quick spin through all the incorrect answers:
(B) Most? We know that some commentators have done this, but not most.
(C) We know that "direct psychological characterization" is a characteristic of the "realistic novel", and we know that Cather's work does not perfectly comply with expectations of a novel, but there's no indication that she intentionally avoided this element. (As icing, there's no indication that this element is "the central feature of the modern Western novel".)
(D) Cather's work "anticipated" the development of narratology, but that does not mean that it necessarily served "as an important impetus" for it. Even if it did, this aspect would be a mere detail, not the main point of the passage.
(E) This may be true, but the passage focuses far more on the critical analysis of Cather's work than simply on what Cather did in that work.

Great work slimz89!