In 1942, Samuel Beckett fled Paris with his future wife just hours ahead of a Gestapo raid on their apartment. They traveled by foot across the French countryside, eventually hiding in the tiny village of Roussillon near Avignon.

There, far removed from the horrors of the chase and the active life he led in the Resistance while in the city, Beckett wrote Watt, a numbing novel of minutia with a pair of sparring narrators expounding on countless tiny issues ad nauseam. When asked why he wrote it, his answer was characteristically terse: “to keep in touch.”

If Watt sounds like what you’ve been watching or reading in the news recently, you’re not alone, especially if you took the time during the break to become acquainted with the terrible beast that is the American 24-hour news cycle. The minutia of Watt at least builds to an overall image, however difficult or unsatisfying that image may be. The talking heads (now there’s a Beckettian image) of television, radio, and the ever-amorphous “new media” will let you “keep in touch,” certainly—but the fatigue from that experience as they circle back to their fellow members of the chattering class makes even breaking news feel like new wine in old skins. We’ve entered a joyless zone that will almost certainly last through February as the presidential candidates criss-cross the country. Is there any way to avoid the fatigue that settles in once you push your exposure to the limit? Must we settle for Watt if we want to “keep in touch?”

Effectively, yes, but there is hope for us yet if we want information in this knives-out environment. As with any addiction, the first step is admitting you have a problem—you are always going to be receiving a flurry of new information without a lot of your own filtering. That’s not to say you should go issuing a diatribe against all outlets and attempt to get your news from carrier pigeons. Complaining about the media is awfully fun—especially from within a media pulpit like a newspaper that tends to look down with a self-righteous sneer at the squawk-boxes of the world. But the world has changed newspapers more than newspapers might like to admit, particularly in the editorial department. The urge to place as much information available to the reader as possible has turned the news pages into the he-said, she-said debates that dominate television and radio. You can’t take the “higher ground” on your choice of information outlets when such ground doesn’t exist.

What does all that mean? In effect, you’ve got to pick your news outlets carefully, acknowledge where their information is coming from, and be responsible for the facts involved, especially when they quote a politician verbatim. Again, as with any addiction, moderating one’s intake to a healthy amount of news and views is far better than obsessively hammering the blogs of three or four Washington insiders in an attempt to strangle a morsel or two of new information out per hour (guilty as charged).

Contrary to popular belief, your own opinion on things matters—we saw this in the presidential primaries in New Hampshire when voters bucked conventional wisdoms of momentum and campaign spending to hand victories to the candidates of their choice. The problem is that so many people believe the veracity of their own opinions that they fail to take their sources to task. The pleasant surprise is that simply asking “really?” to a fact or quotation in an article or blog post will often get you a more detailed answer from any number of watchdog groups or other publications (whose own biases should be taken into account). Did your candidate of choice really obfuscate his or her position on something? Did the unrest after the recent Kenyan election ride on something far deeper than a series of older tribal differences? Is that Op-Ed writer out of his mind? (You’re not allowed to ask me that one, though. Sorry.)

The bow is bent and drawn this election season in the United States. The rhetoric and mud-slinging is only going to get worse, and in the long and terrible period between the determination of the major political parties’ nominees and their respective conventions it’s going to be a slug-fest without end (unless you’re following the script to a play called Waiting For Bloomberg). News about other subjects will dry up, while CNN devotes an hour or two a day to YouTube movies of Barking Dogs For Ron Paul or an equally time-filling topic.

The bad news is, as with Watt, “keeping in touch” this year requires you to be an active participant in determining your own set of facts and fictions in a minutia-obsessed environment. The good news is, as with Watt, there might be something rewarding in that search, some greater understanding to be gained from the mess, and your own opinion will actually matter in deciphering the greater whole when you take a stand on an issue. Pick your sources carefully, check your facts, and “keep in touch.”

Chas Carey is a Columbia College senior majoring in political science and American studies. What Where runs alternate Wednesdays.