What's "real," anyway?

[Evisse the Blue]

insofar as the only way for the book to get me to accept it as true, is by being well-written!?!?

*nods head in agreement*

I'm sorry, I can't help to throw my three pieces of mithril in the pot:
Good book = true book = well-written book.
If Tolkien hadn't been such a talented writer, we wouldn't be here discussing the moral implications of the story. So everything begins with a well-written book. And a well-written book is a believable one, and it's true in the sense that it's believed to be true.

Another quote that may be more or less applicable here: "A poem must not mean but be" (Archibald MacLeish). For me that quote has come to imply that a good poem , or any work of art for that matter, is understood intuitively to 'exist'. Not in the sense of wishful thinking, in an alternate universe or something ... By accepting that it's true you recognize its 'wholeness', its beauty and the writer's talent in bringing it to life, if you will.
Maybe that is the greatest compliment to be payed to a work of art: that it is.
My apologies for being so incoherent at this time, maybe I'll manage to make more sense after I've slept on it.