Fictional Science

Reading literary fiction, but not popular fiction or nonfiction, improves your empathy and social skills, according to a report in The New York Times about a recent scientific study.

It took me two paragraphs of the Times story to come to a one-word evaluation of the study: Hogwash. It just didn’t make sense. I could maybe believe a study that said well-written, character-driven fiction increased empathy, but I find it hard to believe that reading highly experimental literary fiction — say Fin...