  Category: Culture The most alarming statistical development from the urlLink NEA's new report on the decline of literary reading has gone pretty much un-reported. Buried in the thirteenth paragraph of the report summary lies this staggering conflageration of findings: "Contrary to the overall decline in literary reading, the number of people doing creative writing increased by 30 percent , from 11 million in 1982 to more than 14 million in 2002.
However, the number of people who reported having taken a creative writing class or lesson decreased by 2.2 million during the same time period . " In other words, Americans neither read nor study literature: they merely write it. I guess this make sense in the context of a culture which teaches artistic genius is just a matter of finding one's own personal voice--i.e.
that everyone has the capacity to be "original. " There's no need to take a class (i.e. learn how to write) or check out other people's writing (learn how other people have written). Anyway, it demonstrates the paradox of modern creativity--never has there been such a personal value placed on creativity, nor such a small audience for the fruits of its labors. I wonder if blogs count as creative writing. 
