LITERATURE DEFINED?

one of the worst pieces of advice I've received in my life I received corporately when a high school teacher of english warned the class in response to an answer I gave don't use literature as an escape ... I see now he should have qualified his warning ... I see now literature is a great escape ... why else do it ... it is in effect the definition of literature as opposed to writing in general ... there's something in the use of the language that makes us willing to linger ... all writing is a collection of ideas and it's those we come to the written word to take away with us when we leave ... ideas that tell us how to do things or why things work or happened the way they did how people behave and how they can be expected to act ... only in literature is taking your time reading it a virtue or reading it out loud just to hear it said ... this is a mistake from the pounding passage of time where we get pounded distracted or hurried on from one idea to another ... eventually we'll escape from and through the race of time but here we linger to listen 1/2