Although literature is basically defined as any imaginative prose or verse, it is that rare story or poem which has earned the distinction of containing permanent value that most readers consider Literature. These are the works that best mirror life, no matter when they were written. Their truths endure because they provide the reader with a deeper, broader understanding of the human condition. It is this characteristic which has kept people reading throughout the centuries.

Literature may be imaginative, but if it veers too far from the plausible, audiences will forsake it. That is why news reporting contains weirder events than fiction. A reader who declares, “I can’t believe that,” doesn’t throw down his/her newspaper and cancel his/her subscription. A novel, however, that jars its reader’s sense of possibility is often put down and never picked up again.

For all intents and purposes, the creative writer is a liar, but must be a believable spinner of falsehoods as well. As he/she delves into him/herself, rearranging facts, he/she makes them conform to his/her intent. Where the writer finds this material is from experience. Only God creates from nothing.  Therefore, since life is the source of human beings’ knowledge, the prose and poetry engendered by the imagination is a carefully plotted view of life. The mirror Literature holds up to the world is more along the lines of the fun house variety. It enlarges, shrinks, distorts reality to suit its own needs. The reality of the image remains recognizable, but affects the reader more sharply than actual life itself.

When Gustav Flaubert, during his trial, exclaimed, “I am Madame Bovary,” he did not mean he was a female spendthrift. As he was building her story, word by word, he lived her life in his imagination. He suffused himself with her motivations so that he could describe them. If he had not, his readers would never have understood her. Because he did so, and with such artistry, his masterpiece is read, admired and experienced to this day. However briefly, his readers can feel that they, too, are Emma Bovary, or, at least, certain aspects of her.

According to Stephen King, “Good fiction shows the inside of things . . . great fiction shows all these things working together; it lifts us briefly above the event horizon of our day-to-day existence and gives us a dreamlike (and godlike) sense of understanding of what life is about.”

Even if the action of a story takes place on a faraway planet, or occurs in the distant past or future, if it is Literature it will touch the reader, draw him/her in and make him/her see things within him/herself in a clearer light.

The writer, having put a part of his/her honest self into a work, whether intentionally or not, strikes a chord in his/her audience by his/her choice of words, which resonate inside his/her readers. A tenuous connection is established between minds. Both reader and author have thought, sensed or felt the same thing, each in a different life. Still, that sliver of life they share remains the human one on Earth.