How novels came to terms with the internet | Books | The Guardian: If these two missions seem incompatible, that's because they are. To encompass both, as Wallace aimed to do, you must be able to derive the Timeless from a series of frivolous Nows, and then you have to persuade your readers that you have given them what they want by presenting them with what they were trying to get away from when they came to you in the first place. No wonder American literary novelists have found it easier just to bow out of the whole "Way We Live Now" rat race, especially when the designated enemy was television. Sure, people spend (or spent) six hours per day watching TV, but they aren't actually doing anything while they're at it. You can address the time your characters presumably squander in front of the tube the same way you treat the time they spend asleep: by passing over it in silence.