Fiction is a kind of compassion-generating machine that saves us from sloth. Is life kind or cruel? Yes Literature answers. Are people good or bad? You bet says Literature. But unlike other systems of knowing Literature declines to eradicate one truth in favor of another.
Like a lot of you I grew up in a family on the ragged edges of the middle class. My daddy sold carpeting and ended up as a maintenance man. After he had a heart attack my mom worked the phones at Sears so we could hang on to our house.
