Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.
Singing and being truthful to a song... I've developed that skill, and I know how to do that real instinctively, that's all I've been doing for the last 25 years.
Given the devaluation of literature and of the study of foreign languages per se in the United States, as well as the preponderance of theory over text in graduate literature studies, creative writing programs keep literature courses populated.