Novels are better than television. For a long time this thesis underwrote nearly all literature that tackled the subject of TV. In the canonical TV novels of the 20th century, the tube invaded your home ( White Noise ), fractured your family ( Memories of My Father Watching TV ), zapped your political will ( Vineland ), and, consumed in high enough doses, induced psychosis equivalent to the most brutal chemical addictions ( Infinite Jest , A Fan’s Notes , Requiem for a Dream ). From Richard Stern’s 1960 proto–reality TV satire Golk onward, literature dramatized the obvious truth about the idiot box: there was a steep psychic cost to the bottomless American need to be entertained, a need that could only be met by what Barbara Kruger called “continuously acrid signals” — emanations from a piece of evil furniture that fried its viewers’ minds with ideology, junky chatter, and footage of civilians being humiliated, plus commercials.…