> Without reading the paywalled study, I'd assume that reading literary fiction would give you insight into how people who write literary fiction (and those who

> Without reading the paywalled study, I'd assume that reading literary fiction would give you insight into how people who write literary fiction (and those who share their demographic) see themselves, but not into their actual behavior. The authors make no such assumption. Their understanding of literature draws on Barthes & Bakhtin, which leads them to the dichotomy of readerly and writerly texts. Whenever they talk about these texts, however, they know not to make assumptions about authors at all. The division between author, narrator and character (and, depending on your background, an implied author) have been well established within literatery studies with Genette, Stanzel and Iser. Reading a book tells you very little about the "actual" author or background, because the process of writing is necessary one of construction and selection. Even an autobiography does not simply tell you the unmitigated, unfiltered, "actual" truth. Reading fiction, then, tells you very little about people's self-images or (historic) background. What it does, however, is that it makes you aware of the distinct construction involved, as well as the divide between fact and fiction. This, in turn, lets you make certain more educated guesses as to the content and surroundings of peoples' utterances, and perhaps how to understand or interpret them.