It's a cute thought, and a good point. But the author is exclusively relying on "English major novels" for making this point (even though they ignore things like the very cool long chapters in Hunchback of Notre Dame that are about the Paris sewer system).

For many of us on this website, we'd probably think of Neal Stephenson, who might have long digressions about cryptographic schemes, or Lagrange points, or whatever other "cool science fact" might be tangentially related to the plot.

But the novel, as an art form, is effectively dead. At the high end of the market, it is at the mercy of the industry gatekeepers, and at the bottom end it has been given over to influencers; bring a guaranteed audience, and you get to publish your fanfic (names of characters having been modified to avoid legal action). There's no room anymore for genuine experimentation, and "good writing" is no longer the measure of a potential best-seller. Was that ever the case, anyway? Probably not.

I'd love to see an article like this, but focusing on how to bring the cool parts of novels into some new type of writing, rather than pretend that writing advice might actually affect the success of a novel.