…the stream of events in the novel…becomes the experience of the reader: the self and world in the novel become our self and surrounding world, so that the experience of reading a novel comes closer than does that of any other form of literature to our personal experience in time. The fundamental form of fiction in-forms[sic] the reader’s self, and as a result consistent patterns of moral and emotional response in the novels of an era can and do take on the impact and authority of mythic information.
–Alan Friedman, 1966