What's it for?

Here's an interesting post on the purpose of fiction by Daniel Greene at The Reading Experience. Claims that real life is now so bizarre that fiction can't keep up are predicated on an assumption that the function of fiction is to mirror life, he says. I like his insight that even those requiring fiction to present a world larger than life are still conforming to this model - literature as some kind of pointer to real life - and I agree with his conclusion that fiction's true role (little acknowledged nowadays) is in fact very different.