D.H. Lawrence talks about the purpose of a novel being to extend the reader’s sympathy. And, it is true that upper middle class women can read happily about thugs, about coal miners, about low life, and to some extent they become better people for it because they are entering into these lives that they have never lived and wouldn’t want to lead but nevertheless it is, I think, the sense of possibilities within life. The range of ways to live that in part explains a novel’s value. I mean, in this day and age, so late really in the life of the genre, why do some of us keep writing them and some of us keep reading them? And I think it is, in part, because of that, that it makes you more human. It’s like meeting people at a cocktail party that you had never met and wouldn’t have cared to meet. You wouldn’t have gone out of your way to meet, but suddenly they become real to you. You understand to some extent.