Art and Life. Literature is about life, about what it means to be human in any given place at some time, about human pursuits and aspirations, which may or may not coincide with those of its author. Even a literature that is self-conscious, that is aware of its being literature, tells the reader something about the life and times that have generated it. In the process of reading, readers are engaged in a dialogue with the world of the author, who invites us constantly to compare their own experiences with the ones being presented, whether they be real, fictional, modeled on previous literature or some of all these. Like all the arts, literature at first engages emotion rather than intellect. As the poet Horace said, "The aim of a poet is either to benefit or to please." People "like" or "dislike" a piece of music or a painting...