ABSTRACT
I can’t tell you exactly when I stopped being surprised to hear people say that the best American art was being made for TV. Intellectuals started saying this in the days of The Sopranos, and much of the general public appeared to agree. It’s the closest thing to consensus our fragmented culture can claim. And yet I admit that I still find it a bit curious when I hear this assertion, or a variant of it, voiced by a prose writer.
