Literature or potboiler?

On Octo­ber 3, 2013, the New York Times pub­lished this article: 

“Say you are get­ting ready for a blind date or a job inter­view. What should you do? Besides show­er and shave, of course, it turns out you should read—but not just any­thing. Some­thing by Chekhov or Alice Munro will help you nav­i­gate new social ter­ri­to­ry bet­ter than a pot­boil­er by Danielle Steel. 

“That is the con­clu­sion of a study Thurs­day in the jour­nal Sci­ence. It found that after read­ing lit­er­ary fic­tion, as opposed to pop­u­lar fic­tion or seri­ous non­fic­tion, peo­ple per­formed bet­ter on tests mea­sur­ing empa­thy, social per­cep­tion, and emo­tion­al intelligence—skills that come in espe­cial­ly handy when you are try­ing to read some­one’s body lan­guage or gauge what they might be thinking. 

“The researchers say the rea­son is that lit­er­ary fic­tion often leaves more to the imag­i­na­tion, encour­ag­ing read­ers to make infer­ence about char­ac­ters and be sen­si­tive to emo­tion­al nuance and complexity.” 

Ah, but that begs the ques­tion: how can you define lit­er­ary fic­tion? My next entry will sug­gest an answer.