Fiction, like art in general, expands our mental and emotional reach by connecting us to lives and worlds beyond our own. The words on the page or the paint on the canvas usher us into other lives. They also connect us to others who share the same experience of audience, and thus make particular conversations possible. 

Like a lot of people, I enjoy reading novels and short stories. I only write nonfiction (and the occasional bit of whimsical free verse); but I get pleasure on a more regular basis from fiction. This is a source of some wonderment for me, particularly given that I don’t just feel incapable of writing fiction – which is not surprising for someone of an analytic bent with a background in philosophy; I even find the idea of trying to do it vaguely disturbing and illegitimate. 

An annoying but necessary habit of critical thinkers (one of many, no doubt) is making connections between seemingly disparate things. Another is making distinctions within seemingly unified ones. The idea, of course, is to strike some sort of balance: to understand both how things connect and how they do not.