Empathy Machines

It's one of the strange ironies of literature that the words themselves aren't communicative. You read a long, emotionally exhausting novel like Samuel Richardson's Clarissa and you become more intimately acquainted with one character. A book is a beautiful piece of machinery that helps us connect to our humanity. Angus Fletcher, beautifully called novels empathy machines. Yes, there's the art for art's sake argument. We can appreciate a work of art in its own right but why deny the positive effect it has on our self growth?