I thought I was the only one on the planet. I don't watch movies either.
I like this line: "I even resent the author for thinking that I'll spend so much time in a world of his creation."
I had never stopped to put it in words but that is exactly how I feel.
Movies too? You've got it bad. But, now that you mention it, I realize my DVD delivery cue is heavy on the documentaries and movies of historical interest, rather lighter than I would have guessed on straight-up entertainment. Gads. I do feel it as a loss; not sure what to make of it.
I've been less keen on fiction over the years (my own work, of course, does not fall into that category, thanks very much) but not for exactly the same reason. I just have the feeling that I ought to be doing someone more productive with my reading time, and as a result I find it more satisfying to read good nonfiction. I guess the short version is "what's the damn point?"
You people are mad, I tell you, mad! It's not necessarily a function of age; I knew a very young man who felt the same way and would only read history. Or Vergil, for some reason. But I still say you're all mad. Maybe they'll invent pills that contain all needed nutrients and calories, and you guys can stop having to waste all that time eating food, hmmm? Or having sex, I mean, what's the point, really, when you could be watching the History Channel? Sheesh.
A quasi-friend of mine has expressed a lack of understanding about the appeal of fiction. I think he finds it lacking in intellectual weight, or something. (I also know, at a remove, two people who have expressed a liking for literature "for the theory". These people are probably misguided as well.)
I've got nothing against fiction, mind: I don't think it's insufficiently weighty nor do I find it unserious or pointless; not at all. But I just can't seem to read it anymore.
I hadn't thought of substituting the History Channel for sex; thanks Belle.
I've felt the same time for a while -- I got stuck in the cul-de-sac of theory and can't get out. Jameson argues that for the latter half of the twentieth century, theory is literature; Derrida is what Proust used to be, for instance.
Whenever I try to read a novel (the last was Richard Ford's Independence Day, last summer, never finished -- I ended up dropping it in order to read the Jameson book from which I got the idea in the previous paragraph), I knew in my head that it was good and enjoyable and insightful -- but life is so chaotic already that I'm kind of sick of getting random "insights." I want some kind of framework, even if it's a framework that swears up and down it's not a framework.