Freedom

From that Time story on Franzen and his latest: Franzen is very conscious that people are freer than ever — that word again — to spend their time and attention being entertained by things that aren't books. That awareness has changed the way he writes.

A lot of literary fiction strikes a bargain with the reader: you suck up a certain amount of difficulty, of resistance and interpretive work and even boredom, and then you get the payoff. This arrangement, which feels necessary and permanent to us, is primarily a creation of the 20th century. Freedom works on something more akin to a 19th century model, like Dickens or Tolstoy: characters you care about, a story that hooks you.