Great Fiction as an Antidote to Loneliness

The late writer David Foster Wallace said that really good fiction can make readers feel less lonely. This comment really struck a chord in me. Almost any decent fiction can absorb readers, entertain them, inform them, involve them, pass the time for them, and more. But only great fiction can make readers feel truly connected (echoes of E. M. Forster) to the characters, as if they were real, and to their thoughts, emotions, dilemmas, fragilities and strengths. And through and beyond the connections to characters, readers of great fiction then feel connected to something larger: to humanity itself, to all the inhabitants of this earth, in a spiritual, even transcendent way. Thinking about this, I am reminded yet again of the amazing gift that great writers and great literature provide to readers, and to humanity.