People are often very surprised to learn I’m not a fan of fiction. They say, “But you’re a writer!”

What really shocks them is when I tell them that the only fiction I ever really cared for was in Harlequin Romance paperbacks, something I’d indulge in on a near-daily basis during my teen years.

Now, mind you—as I always emphasize whenever I make known this significant piece of trivia from my past—I didn’t care for the Harlequins that were published after the early ’70s and would visit the public library, or stop at yard/garage sales, to find ones from the ’50s and ’60s written by British authors.

I found these Harlequins had much more interesting and romantic circumstances, events, dialogue, character development, suspense, etc. The fun part was you’d get all the way to the last page sometimes before the couple would even embrace or kiss. Some of them never did get to any physical contact! This all added to the romance, of course.

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Yesterday, I read in the San Diego Union-Tribune an op-ed review piece about a new book out, The Age of American Unreason, in which the author is quoted lamenting, “In 2002 the National Endowment for the Arts released a survey indicating that fewer than half of adult Americans had read any work of fiction or poetry in the preceding year—not even detective novels, bodice-ripper romances, or the ‘rapture’ novels based on the Book of Revelation.”

Jacoby said this as definitive proof for her argument on just how “dumb and dumber” Americans have become, as if reading fiction and poetry was the key to intellectual growth and overall intelligence.

I personally think I was much better prepared for my career as a newspaper-magazine journalist by not pursuing fiction as either a creative outlet or a source of entertainment.

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When it comes to today’s society, people prefer fiction over fact in all aspects of life. Just look at the messianic appeal of Barack Obama, who understands well that he is simply portraying a movie-like representation of a “world leader.” It’s a caricature of himself he’s honing for the fiction-loving masses.

I actually have a longtime journalist friend in Chicago who had a one-on-one interview with Obama several years ago. He reported back to me, “It was spooky. He’s got this charismatic-smooth-as-butter-Antichrist-quality that sucks you in, like it or not.”

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In a newspaper op-ed piece last week on the Obama hysteria, syndicated Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote, “And now, in the most amazing trick of all, a silver-tongued freshman senator has found a way to sell hope (like Aqualina found a way to sell reprocessed tap water and Google sells dictionary nouns to its advertisers). To get it, you need only give him your vote. Barack Obama is getting millions.

“This kind of sale is hardly new. Organized religion has been offering a similar commodity—salvation—for millennia. Which is why the Obama campaign has the feel of a religious revival with, as writer James Wolcott observed, a ‘salvational fervor’ and ‘idealistic zeal divorced from any particular policy or cause and chariot-driven by pure euphoria.

“ ‘We are the hope of the future,’ sayeth Obama. We can ‘remake this world as it should be.’ Believe in me, and I shall redeem not just you but your country—nay, we can become ‘a hymn that will heal this nation, repair this world, and make this time different from all the rest.’ ”

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Under the headline “Poetic Justice,” a feature story in today’s Los Angeles Times told about prison inmates inside the California Men’s Colony who spend 12 hours a day rehearsing for Shakespeare dramas in a London Shakespeare program that pairs convict cast members with professional actors donating their time (including the likes of Al Pacino, Richard Dreyfuss and Kenneth Branagh).

The article reveals, “Some inmate actors say they were lured into the program by Deborah Tobola, a resident artist and writer who serves as a facilitator in Arts in Corrections. She offered them a choice: the Bard or ‘the yard,’ where participating prisoners say they have to do more acting than they do in the Shakespeare workshop just to survive the racial and social politics of prison life. ‘We should get Academy Awards,’ cracks William Brown, 30.”

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Traveling through Arizona last Friday on my way to southern California, I picked up a copy of The Arizona Republic newspaper.

While the front cover carried news of the deadly school shooting the day before at Northern Illinois University, a light-hearted feature story on zombie movies in the Arts section quoted the assistant director of the Arizona State University School of Theater and Film as assessing:

“The audience can relate to zombies in a peculiar way of thinking. While most of us cannot really imagine ourselves as vampires, homicidal, mask-wearing maniacs or aliens from other worlds, we have all had days when we felt that shuffling, dragging feeling, that monotony and distrust of other humans that zombies embody.

“How often have we all said, ‘I’m brain dead,’ or, ‘I’m dead tired?’ Zombies are the nth iteration of these feelings, and can often both scare us and make us laugh at ourselves through identification.’

“So who are they, exactly? ‘To me,’ (prominent zombie film producer George) Romero said, ‘if the zombies represent anything, they’re just sort of the working Joes. They’re the people nobody listens to, and then all of a sudden they’re too strong.’ ”