Where have all the readers gone?

Does anyone read any more?

The conundrum isn’t all that puzzling, really — after all, I do live in Los Angeles. This is home of the entertainment business, not a literary mecca like New York or San Francisco. And yet I find myself asking the same questions each day. How can people not read books? I can’t imagine a life without them. Living in L.A. makes me yearn for a community of serious readers.

Literature seems even more valuable when you’ve spent time away from it. A couple of years ago, I was devoting all my time to improv comedy theatre, rehearsing with my team, watching shows, and performing at least once a week. I loved every minute of it, but something was missing. There was a void in me so deep that I began questioning everything around me. What am I doing? Why am I here? These are questions that I’m sure everyone has pondered at some point, but for me, the more I asked, the further I descended to an abyss of utter madness. Life felt like one heavy burden that I couldn’t lift.

I then realized something: I had stopped reading.

I looked through my bookshelf and pulled out Jonathan Franzen’s collection of essays, How to be Alone. I had read it while I was in college, and reading it again, I remembered why I’ve always wanted to be a writer and why I love books. Reading allows one to connect with a community he or she may not be able to find elsewhere.

Franzen asks, “The novelist has more and more to say to readers who have less and less time to read: Where to find the energy to engage with a culture in crisis when the crisis consists in the impossibility of engaging with the culture?”

It’s a question I’m sure many writers and readers will continue to ponder.

Welcome to L.A.

Long before I moved to Los Angeles, while I was a film student in San Francisco, I was told that the city was a breeding ground for superficiality. People in L.A., they said, were shallow creatures concerned about nothing except for breaking into showbusiness. How ironic, I thought, that the City of Angels was filled with self-absorbed demons. Still, after graduating from the Academy of Art College, I packed up all my stuff and moved to the alleged hellhole.

They couldn’t have been more wrong … and right. L.A. is far from the heartless town people say it is. I’ve met some of my best friends here. Yet there’s an underlying sense of selfishness that I haven’t felt anywhere else (well, besides film school). It’s only natural, of course. This is, after all, a city populated by many wanna-be actors, aspiring screenwriters, and struggling film directors. No one moves to L.A. to be a philanthropist.

I came out here to pursue a career in — yes, showbusiness. I’m a screenwriter. Although I’m not sure if pursue is the right term. The word makes me think of a man or woman chasing after something. But how does one chase after a career? Really, you can only work at accomplishing what you want. You go to a job interview to get a job, but you don’t chase it around like a dog.

Maybe that’s why there’s so much tension in this city. Everyone seems to believe they’re in some sort of competition. The competitive nature of this business is normal, but there’s no guarantee that any of us will reach the finish line — or if the finish line even exists. My theory? It’s all in our head. There’s no race. The best we can do is work on our daily accomplishments and not worry about winning. Because, really, we succeed everyday by showing up and doing the work.

L.A. is a great place to be creative. It’d be a shame to be consumed by the vices of the weak and selfish, when there are far more important things to do in life.