The other night in class (Noir Fiction) I asked my studen...

The other night in class (Noir Fiction) I asked my students to talk about what they like to read. I had I thought 3 writing majors in this class (I teach at an art school that has this major) while the other 8 were some variation on sequential art or animation or advertising or graphic design or game development. The writing majors are of course excited about this class and they responded to the question immediately. As you might imagine there were a number of graphic novels in their repertoire. Although I realized when I got home and looked at my roster that two of them weren't actually writing majors, but instead fashion and graphic design. The third actually was a writing major and mentioned Lovecraft and a few other kings of particular genres. But these 3 that responded actively to my question at least were reading and reading a lot, and they liked books. Crickets for everyone else. I said, "I don't care what you read, just tell me anything, blogs or websites, magazines. Do you read your bills before your pay them? That's fine too." Crickets again, for a minute. A solitary tumbleweed rolled across the classroom's floor. Then this one kid said, "I just don't read. If I'm on a website or something, I scroll past any text until I get to a video." One woman, whom I learned was a writing major after I came home, echoed this guy, saying, "Yeah, I don't really like reading." A WRITING MAJOR. Holy crap. After a departmental meeting this afternoon I learned that there's an MFA student who confessed that she does not read anything at all--except the Bible. Seriously, what the fuck? How, why, would anyone choose writing as a major if they don't read? I mean the Bible is perhaps the world's craziest most interesting novel and you can read the crap out of it and get some great ideas, but you've got to read more. To not read at all. Hmm. Methinks there's trouble astir in democracy land.