Whatever else it does, GOOD literature should provoke thought in you, it should change you in some way and give you new insight into the world or a new point of view. You shouldnt be able to just forget it as you would a trashy novel or a comic. It should make you grow as a person.

First, isn’t it “all along”? In any case, the quote means that literature has many purposes, entertainment among them, but if it doesn’t make you think, it’s not literature but rather a kind of chewing gum for the brain. No one would argue that the act of chewing gum qualifies as exercise, and by the same token, reading something that has no meaning other than the surface-level storyline is unlikely to make you think. Even the most far-out fantasy — for example, Harry Potter or the Wizard of Oz — has elements that give the reader pause and lead to thinking. It’s questionable whether pornography or sheer escapism can make this claim. The key to understanding this quote is to keep in mind the distinction between mere reading, on the one hand, which might be a classified ad or the comic strips, and reading actual literature…