Reading of strangers

Earlier I was looking through an archive of Postsecret, and there was a secret on it that referred to a significant characteristic of literature. Postsecret, by the way, is a project created by Frank Warren where anyone can anonymously mail him handmade postcards that display a secret of theirs, and he posts them on the Postsecret blog and publishes them in books. Here was someone's secret:
I liked this postcard--and the idea of Postsecret in general--because it plays on one of the important elements of literature; it provides us easy access to the insights and stories of strangers. In the book The Message in the Bottle, Walker Percy discusses the way that when an alienated man reads a book about an alienated man, this provides him with the means to move out of his alienation. Literature offers a connection between people who will probably never know each other, but just the knowledge that others are experiencing similar life circumstances provides a certain comfort in them.