“Cognitive psychologist Keith Oatley found that reading narrative fiction allows us to experience ‘a simulation of selves.’ His research shows that we are rehearsing all sorts of interactions with others that expand our understanding of those different from ourselves. We are enlarging our capacity for empathy.
“Taking another’s experience and making it our own is one of the most mysterious transactions in human experience. When we read fiction and memoir, we participate in the lives of others, in their sufferings, ecstasies, yearnings, and struggles, in all the ways their lives are shattered and put back together. We are able to see the world through their eyes and feel with their hearts.”
