On your side, Scottie, you have Mark Twain: "He stopped reading all together, much to the benefit of his creativity." Of course, against you is the advice of Aristotle, Longinius, Johnson, Eliot, Pound, Bloom and even Steven King, to name just a modicum. If you really want the whole argument scan through the first chapter of John Warner's infinitly valuable text _The Art of Fiction_. The short form is: Read the greats. Imitate for a while. Strike out on your own when you've figured out what the have done. Only then can you contribute to this continium of dialog we call the literary canon. Honestly it's the same idea as asking subscribers to this list to read the archives. You have to know what's said before to say something new. Or as TS Eliot states, "You must know the rules, in order to break them." If you're still into that modernist gig. So that's why we writers read. Not to mention there's some good shit out there. -j