I was reading St. Augustine's Confessions recently, and I came across this passage:
If I ask which would cause the greater inconvenience to someone's life, to forget how to read and write or to forget these fabulous poems [Virgil's Aeneid], who does not see what answer he would give, unless he has totally lost his senses? So it was a sin in me as a boy when I gave pride of place in my affection to these empty fables rather than to more useful studies . . . . (Chapter I xiii (22))
Augustine takes the ascetic attitude that study of fiction or art for pleasure's sake is sinful. We should spend our time learning more basic knowledge, knowledge that will take us closer to God. He believes that the more practical and simpler disciplines are the purer.
It is a flawed argument, to be sure, but it is also one of the reasons I abandoned my career in the arts and letters for medicine. I was looking for a knowledge of practical truth; I wanted to read and write more than to indulge in
Such madness [that] is considered a higher and more fruitful literary education than being taught to read and write.
Read and write is what I do, and I shall not be ashamed of it.