Reading Fiction Matters: Craig Bennett Explains

by Craig Bennett*

In a recently published essay of mine (“Men, read more fiction,” January 21, 2026), I expanded on the idea advanced in a Wall Street Journal column that fewer and fewer men are reading fiction. However, the decline of reading as a recreational activity—especially the reading of fiction—has been declining among the American population for quite some time.

Martha Stweart, of all people, appears to be concerned about the same thing but on a wider scale. Her August 28, 2025, internet magazine features an article by Michele Laufik drawing heavily on a recent joint study conducted by the University of Florida and University College in London and published in the journal iScience. The study found that “reading for pleasure in the United States has declined more than 40 percent over the last 20 years.” By 2023, only about 16 percent of Americans were reading for pleasure in an average day—and the study considered “books, magazines, newspapers, audiobooks, and e-readers” as qualified reading.

The decline appears to be the result of several different influences, among which are the “rise of digital media, economic pressures, shrinking leisure time, and limited access to books and libraries,” particularly for those who may have severely limited funds available with which to purchase books or who live too far from the nearest lending library for it to be a realistic option. Some people may point to the surprising amount of time they spend each day reading the innumerable poorly written, jargon-filled, heavily abbreviated, and often barely comprehensible text messages on their ipads, smart phones, or what-have-you; but the content of such writing, as well as the writing itself, could hardly be considered comparable to a well-written and professionally edited novel or an article in a current news magazine or newspaper.

But only a couple of generations ago, people were relaxing and entertaining themselves with what were then recent novels by John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemmingway, Thomas Wolf, Pearl Buck, and other writers now considered among the great. The WSJ columnist Gerard Baker suggested that men, if they were reading anything at all, were reading non-fiction works containing information and ideas that would be of use to them in their job. One reader of my previous essay wondered if, perhaps, the men were watching DVDs or playing video games instead of reading. Apparently she interpreted the chief benefit of reading fiction to be the story; and stories can be communicated in several different ways, of which the written word is only one. But there’s a practical utility in reading fiction that’s being ignored.

Albert Einstein is reputed to have offered the opinion that “[i]magination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.” Consequently, to one of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century, imagination is worth cultivating and developing, especially when we are young. The reason can probably be best explained by Marshall McLuhan’s idea of “hot” and “cold” media. Books, in this context, are a hot medium because they engage the reader’s imagination. As you read the description of a setting, you have to imagine what it looks like. As you read the description of a character, you have to imagine what he or she looks like. As you read a bit of narration, you have to imagine the action as it unfolds before you in print.

Movies, DVDs, video games, and similar entertainments are cold media because there is neither need nor opportunity for the audience to use their imagination. Everything is right there in front of them, clearly defined and entirely visible. You don’t have to imagine what Indiana Jones looks like as he flees the angry natives chasing him through the jungle at the beginning of “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” It’s all there: Indiana himself, the natives in pursuit, the jungle—everything is clearly visible as it unfolds on the screen in front of you. Your imagination doesn’t have to construct your own, uniquely personal vision of what’s happening. All you have to do is to sit there, watch, and be passively entertained. Your imagination simply remains dormant.

And perhaps most importantly, fiction serves to humanize[CB1] the reader through his or her identification with one or more of the characters in the story. This is because fiction deals with human emotions; other types of writing do not. Even history and biography (with the possible exception of autobiography) portray human beings in primarily objective terms. The historian and the biographer are outsiders looking into the lives of other people in terms of what they did. There is not much, if anything, about how they felt. In purely historical and biographical writing, they have no interior life as does any well-conceived and skillfully created character in fiction.

Imagining oneself as Jean Valjean of Les Miserables, or Tom Joad of The Grapes of Wrath, or Anna Karenina in Tolstoy’s great novel of the same name fosters empathy in the reader; and empathy is of paramount importance to any society that claims to value the common humanity of people all over the world. As noted philosopher Anna Harendt reminded us, “The death of human empathy is one of the most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism.” That death has enabled the Holocaust, the present predations of I.C.E., various past and ongoing genocides throughout the world, and other such examples of man’s inhumanity to man.

This is why fiction should be important to us and why reading it confers a value essential to any society that hopes to endure.

* 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

• 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
• Hannah Arendt, qtd. in the Washington Post in The Week, Feb. 21, 2025, pg. 17

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