Tallulah: The columnist attributes the decline of interest in novels to consumerism, technology, and the laziness of people who prefer watching television to reading a novel  However, in reaching this conclusion, the columnist has overlooked important evidence
It is surely relevant that contemporary fiction is frequently of poor quality -- indeed, much of it is meaningless and depressing -- whereas many good newspapers, magazines, professional journals, and books of other types are currently available
People read as much as they used to, but most of the works they now read are not novels.