How to Read a Novel

"A work of fiction, a novel, does not always transport us to a battlefield. It may take us to a palace, an island in the South Seas, a country about which we know nothing but its glamorous name. A book-a well-composed book-is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way. Yet, in another sense, all true works of fiction have their scenes laid in the same country, and the events take place in the same climate: that country, that climate which we all long for and in our several ways strive to reach-the region where truth is eternal and man immortal and flowers never fade"--