Danger lies in the insertion of any technology in fiction, whether it is misunderstood, clumsily included, or over-relied upon. It dates a work, but it also helps indicate how well a novel lives in that date: whether something has been captured, or something lost.

For Bitch, the Rumpus’s Tumblr editor Molly McArdle wrestles with the way Marisha Pessl’s new novel filters the world through the Internet, doling plot and characterization out to the reader through “a fake New York Times obituary, laid out in a Safari browser window; a Vulture comment section, complete with Facebook, Twitter, RSS, and email buttons; a Time slideshow with—yes—a page for every slide.”

Read the whole thing here.