The Stranger Things Effect Comes for the Novel
A crop of stories is responding to the fakery of the digital age by embracing the realness of analog objects.
![A grainy moving image of a hand putting a VHS tape into an old VCR.](https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/XOllt5LhYcDFSR18K3D41JfXWgc=/185x0:747x562/80x80/media/img/mt/2025/01/VHS/original.gif)
A crop of stories is responding to the fakery of the digital age by embracing the realness of analog objects.
John Steinbeck beat Sanora Babb to the great American Dust Bowl novel—using her field notes. What do we owe her today?