Smart phones aren’t about intelligence at all. They’re about emotion. It seemed sad to me to have Charlie waiting and waiting for his daughter to play a word. That’s all that’s left of his connection to her, and it turns W.W.F. from a time-wasting app into a vehicle by which he can express his paternal love, or at least try. In “The Marriage Plot,” there’s a bit from Roland Barthes’s “A Lover’s Discourse” about waiting for the telephone to ring. Remember how agonizing it was in the old days, making sure you didn’t tie up the line in case your lover called? We’ve got voice mail now, and texting, but the agony of waiting hasn’t changed one bit. In fact, it might be even worse. It doesn’t just happen with romantic partners now, but with friends and family members. Our ability to be in constant touch with people has made us less able to be alone, and therefore more constantly agitated.

Jeffrey Eugenides in The New Yorker vorbind despre cum a scris cea mai recenta nuvela a lui “Find the Bad Guy”, mini interviul aici