Why would a novelist stop reading?

Via The Globe and Mail, a column by Russell Smith: Why would a novelist stop reading? Excerpt:

Philip Roth caused a minor Net storm last week after he was quoted in the Financial Times as saying he didn’t read fiction any more. He wouldn’t explain to the interviewer why not. All he would concede was, “I wised up.” 

This is odd for a man whose prodigious output of made-up narrative is so clearly seamed with the history of 19th- and 20th-century novelistic prose, so refinedly articulate, so thoroughly literary that it could have evolved only from proximity to other books. 

The highly artificial and conventionalized art of fiction doesn’t emerge ex nihilo from a totally original brain; no art works that way. Art is spawned by other art. You don’t decide to become a landscape painter by looking at a lovely landscape, but by looking at paintings of lovely landscapes. 

The subsequent online discussion revealed a few more interesting authors who also made this bold claim to non-literacy. An insightful article in Salon, by Laura Miller, on non-fiction reading by fiction authors, quoted both Will Self and Cormac McCarthy as saying they couldn’t be bothered with anyone else’s novels any more – for no convincing reasons.

I see the same attitude in myself: For every novel I read now, I must read two dozen nonfiction books. Nonfiction is simply more interesting than reading yet another novelist's take on some well-worn genre...especially science fiction and fantasy, which have, so to speak, degenerated into the kind of "prolefeed" Orwell foretold in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

But I haven't entirely wised up; I scan the new titles in my library, hoping for a surprise. Sometimes I get one, like China Miéville, who is exuberantly over the top. More often, the shelves feature inbred whelps ten generations removed from Tolkien and Heinlein. I can only assume that publishers bring them out because the readers don't know Tolkien or Heinlein, and therefore don't know any better. 

Comments

[Ruth Cooke]

I hate to say this, but you're right. I still read fiction, but not as much as I used to. At the same time, non-fiction reading (including web reading) has given me many a new idea for my own writing.

And I agree with you about Tolkien and Heinlein. 'Nuff said on that score...

[Adam Randall Russell]

I've discovered that I read less and less non-fiction simply because I get enough of real life in...well, real life. And isn't it a bit rude to call someone an inbred whelp, regardless of how you feel about their writing? Readers have different preferences regarding style. I respect Tolkien endlessly for the stories he told, but always found his work to be a bit long-winded...

[Kohi Raikoan]

The claim of writing, without reading, is hard to swallow but, of course, fiction can be churned out if one has stopped reading but has read enough. I think.

[Chantz Hebert]

The problem with fiction books are similar to the problem the film industry is having. Everyone is either copying or flat out remaking everybody else. We as writers need to come up with completly unique storylines and even writing styles to get readers back into fiction books.