The air smelled of

woodsmoke,

of distances, and passing

time.

Frost glimmer on the

morning field. Crows

called across the

 pewter afternoons.

     ~James Carlos Blake

A novelist is bound to express values, and I think he should be conscious of the fact that he is, in a sense, a compulsory moralist. Novelists differ, of course, in the extent to which they set out to reflect on morals and to put that reflection into their work. I certainly do reflect and this reflection into my works, whether or not with success. The question is how to do it. If you can’t do it well, you had better not do it all. If you have strong moral feelings you may be i n difficulties with your characters because you may want them to be less emphatic than you are yourself. In answer to your queston, I think a novelist should be wary of being a teacher in a didactic sense, but should be conscious of himself as a moralist. ~ Iris Murdoch