(np) novel as many time pad

[Michael Bailey]

every so often I imagine myself giving a first lecture in an intro lit
class, which I have always thought should be an apologia for reading
fiction...

while it probably bears the same resemblance to a real lecture as on
Married With Children when Ed O'Neill dons a longhaired wig and
introduces himself as Axl Bundy...how about this --

Everyone is familiar with cryptography and Bletchley Park and how to
keep people from understanding your messages.  One of the hardest
forms of encryption to crack is the one-time pad, which by
prearrangement can almost always prevent decryption.

An even more important problem than limiting the people understanding
communication is the opposite problem: how to make a larger number of
people understand each other's messages more thoroughly.

A novel can function as a many-time pad, which with increasing use
reveals more and more to a larger number of people, so that eventually
references to the work can communicate more in fewer words...such
as...


etcetera etcetera, mutatis mutandis