In early-twentieth-century England, it was fashionable to claim that only a completely new style of writing could address a world undergoing unprecedented transformation – just as one literary critic recently claimed that only the new "aesthetic of exploratory excess" can address a world undergoing ... well, you know. Yet in early-twentieth-century England, T. S. Eliot, a man fascinated by the "presence" of the past, wrote the most innovative poetry of his time. The lesson for today's literary community seems obvious: a reorientation toward tradition would benefit writers no less than readers. But if our writers and critics indeed respect the novel's rich tradition (as they claim to), then why do they disdain the urge to tell an exciting story?