As a longtime practitioner of the art of fiction writing and a committed reader of the works of others, I have been thinking a great deal about the impact of the proliferating film/TV industry on the future of reading.

Having lived through the golden age of Hollywood films shown in ubiquitous neighborhood theaters in the United States with outlets throughout the world, I hadn’t given much thought to the moving images’ actual impact on reading up until recently. Although there were voices that persisted in sounding the death knell of the novel, the popularity of novels and short stories never seemed challenged by the movies.

The novelist as hero was a celebrated figure and outsized literary personalities like Earnest Hemingway, Sinclair Lewis, William Faulkner, John Steinbeck, Pearl Buck and numerous others were accorded celebrity status and given serious prizes on the national and international scene. The competition emanating from watching films did not seem to diminish the popularity of reading.

In today’s world, visual storytelling of every conceivable variety is a worldwide staple surpassing in scope and volume what was churned out in Hollywood in its golden age and what was available on network television in the days when only a few select networks dominated the media. CONTINUE READING ON THOUGHT CATALOG