In response to the learned Mr Thorpe, whose book Why Literature is Bad For You is being discussed here and here and here and here, and his claim that:

An underlying message of much literature is that a substitute for action, a sensation of having acted, is better than action itself...

I would like to submit a rather large excerpt of Monsieur Diderot's "Eloge de Richardson" which first appeared in the Journal etranger (Jan. 1762).

In this very fine article, Monsieur Diderot esteemes the virtue of sentimental reading. He sees it not as an indulgence which absorbs one's capacity to feel and think and act in real life, as Mr Thorpe contends, but as an indulgence which absorbs our capacity to think and feel and then encourages us to act upon what we have experienced, through reading, in the real world.

Mr Thorpe states that:

[Some writers] temporarily remove from your mind the fact that all you [have] done is sit on your posterior and read a novel. [They give] readers the illusion that they [have] done something....From [there] it is only one more step to the kind of literature that gives us the impression, not of having done something, but of having thought or felt something. Maybe one reason why Gray's "Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard is said to be the most famous poem in the language is that it succeeds so brilliantly in giving us the illusion that we have emoted over the graves of obscure villagers--when in fact we have done no such thing. It's possible that when we finish the "Elegy" we are so steeped in "having felt" that we can feel no more.... Armed with the feeling that we have already performed, we can't see the need of performing further.

Monsieur Diderot would agree that a masterful fiction has the power to absorb. Consider the following description of his experience of reading the novels of Samuel Richardson:

In the space of a few hours I had been through a host of situations which the longest life can scarcely provide in its whole course. I had heard the genuine language of the passions; I had seen the secret springs of self-interest and self-love operating in a hundred different ways; I had become privy to a multitude of incidents and I felt I had gained in experience.

Monsieur Diderot has indeed felt and thought that he has experienced more than he actually has; for, he has probably not arisen from his posterior in all the time he has been reading. However, before we conceed that Mr Thorpe is right, let us also consider that it is this immersion in the text which Monsieur Diderot claims provokes action; for he states:

[T]hanks to this author, I have loved my fellow beings more, and loved my duty more; ... I have had only pity for the wicked; ... I have developed more sympathy for the unfortunate, more reverence for the good, more prudence in dealing with the things of the present, more indifference for the things of the future, more contempt for life, and more love for virtue, the only good which we can ask from heaven, and the only one it can grant us, without punishing us for our ill-considered requests!

Reading fiction has wrought a deep change in the heart of Monsieur Diderot. A change which influences every feeling, every thought and every action since his introduction to the works of the esteemed Richardson. Diderot goes on to observe how the reading of literature influences the friendships made and maintained in life:

Since I have known [Richardson's novels], they have been my touchstone. If anyone does not like them, my judgement on that person is made. I have never talked about them to any man I esteem without trembling lest his judgement might not be the same as mine, I have never met anyone who shared my enthusiasm without wanting to put my arms round him and hug him.

Finally, let us consider Diderot's contention that it is from this sentimental reading that we gain a sense of morality, not just pertaining to the circumstances within the text, but for every occasion we shall encounter after having read and responded to the text.

"I have observed that, amongst people who read Richardson together or separately, the conversation was all the more interesting and lively.

I have heard, as a consequence of their reading, the most important questions concerning morality and taste being discussed and analyzed."

Diderot asserts:

If it matters to men to be convinced that, independently of any concerns beyond this life, the best thing we can do to be happy is to be virtuous, what benefit Richardson has brought to humankind! He has not demonstrated this truth; he has made us feel it; with every line he leads us to prefer the fate of virtue oppressed to that of vice triumphant. Who would wish to be Lovelace with all his advantages? Who would not rather be Clarissa, despite all her misfortunes?

I have often said, as I read him: I would happily give my life to be like this woman; I would rather be dead than be that man.

If I am able, despite the selfish motives which may disturb my judgement, to apportion my contempt or my esteem according to just standards of impartiality, it is to Richardson that I owe it. My friends, read him again and again....

Mankind, come and learn from him how to come to terms with the evils of life; come, we shall weep together over the unfortunates in his stories, and we will say: 'If fate casts us down, at least honest folk will weep also weep over us.'

Indeed, let us all read, feeling the plight of the characters deeply, for though it be fiction, though we be absorbed, we will be changed, we will consider the right way to act and what we discover in word will be rendered in deed.