Craig Bennett Suggests: "Men, Read More Fiction"

by Craig Bennett*

In a recent edition of the Wall Street Journal, Gerard Baker quotes a disturbing statistic: “Barely 1 in 4 men reads fiction.” He goes on to describe this as “a shame.” Why a shame? Because Baker knows, as do nearly all of us who have read even a few of the great classic novels, they “teach you much more about human motivation that lies at the base of everything in politics, business, and life itself.”

Baker implies that men these days, if they read at all, read mostly things that will benefit them in terms of their job. Such publications as “best practices in human resource management or the history of data collection centers” he offers as only partially facetious examples. But that, I’m sure, is just one of the unfortunate effects of Modern Man’s deriving his total identity from what he does to pay the bills. To an alarming extent, our job has come to constitute our identity; and this is especially true of men.

Unfortunately, the fact that so many of us of us work at a job that enables some corporation or business enterprise to make a profit eventually forms the assumption in our collective subconscious that the existence and activity of such institutions is essential to our survival. In a very meaningful sense, it is. But because of that, we tend to place Corporate America, the business world, and commerce in general on a very high pedestal. By this point it has become the governing paradigm for the meaning, purpose, and activity of our daily lives. Our days, weeks, and even years are structured around its demands; and we sacrifice huge quantities of time, labor, natural resources, the environment itself, and our personal freedom to its continued growth, expansion, and influence.

This sort of thing seems to represent a trend that has been widely reported since at least the nineteen-fifties, although such conditions were present historically, to one extent or another, since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. A number of developments in industrial and business technology, laws governing labor and employment practices, the attitudes of society in general, the kind of work available, and the number of people seeking it have created a buyers’ market for labor frequently dominated by Type A, workaholic executives who assume—or simply demand—the same sort of fanatical devotion to work on the part of their employees that they themselves have. It’s a situation where the value of work is frequently elevated and enforced beyond either reason or necessity, but the value of the worker has been reduced to practically nothing. And as John Steinbeck put it, “If such things are not written as fiction a whole pattern of present day thinking and feeling will be lost. We will have the record but not what people felt about them.”

This is still another way in which our whole society is seriously out of balance. At the moment, I don’t have a ready solution. But I carry, like an increasing number of other citizens of the Earth, a warning. If we continue along the path of ever-increasing population, industrial production, resource exploitation, and environmental pollution, we will eventually find ourselves trying to survive on a dead planet.

These are the kinds of things against which good fiction immunizes a person if it’s read with careful attention. Research has shown that we human beings make our decisions more according to our feelings than according to our intellect. Analysis removes us too far and too easily from that “inner teacher” of whom Dr. Parker J. Palmer wrote—our conscience, or our once pure and innocent soul that still knows, way down deep, what is good and what is not, what is right and what is not. The premium of approval we presently place on getting the drop on the other guy or pulling off a swift, shrewd deal distorts what our conscience is trying to tell us. And too often we choose to ignore it simply to remain in the good graces of the boss. Or score a couple of points toward a nice annual bonus. Or a raise. Or something else that will enhance our material well-being. At least for a while.

The self-proclaimed “job creators” are pumping money into robotics and artificial intelligence as fast as they can in the hope of being able to lay off still more human workers and have the work done by machines that don’t get paid, expect no vacations, will never take a sick day, etc. I wonder what will happen to all the ordinary, working-class people who used to hold those jobs. But that’s because I’ve read about Jean Valjean, the hero of Les Miserables, who was hauled off to prison for stealing a loaf of bread because his daughter was hungry. I’ve read about Tom Joad and his family who, like thousands of “Okies,” lost their farm to the bank when the crops failed, the land dried up, and California seemed like the only logical place to go. I’ve read about Faulkner’s Flem Snopes, who began as a lowly clerk in a general store and waged a subtle but persistent campaign to gradually—and quietly—acquire as much property and influence in and around Mississippi’s Yoknapatawpha County as possible. And I have some understanding of what it’s like for a woman to be trapped in a loveless marriage because I’ve read Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. I’ve learned things about human beings, including myself, that I would never find in a manual, an analytical report, or anything else that failed to deal with the fact that all business activity is the result of actions and decisions by people. And if you don’t have a reasonably deep understanding of who and what people are, you’re going to be at a disadvantage in dealing with them in any sort of activity.

* Craig H. Bennett, author of Nights on the Mountain and More Things in Heaven and Earth, available at amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, and most book stores.

SOURCES:

• The Week, August 2029, “Viewpoint,” pg. 12
• Laufik, Michele. “The Surprising Hobby People Are Abandoning—Down 40%, New Study Finds.” Martha Stewart, August 28, 2025. Yahoo.com.
• Steinbeck, John: A Life in Letters. Elaine Steinbeck and Robert Wallsten, ed. New York. Viking 1975, pg. 455

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