If we find that the writer’s views are ethnocentric or sexist or racist, we reject the application, and we bar his or her entry into the present.” But no, thought Morton: “it isn’t the writer who’s the time traveler. It’s the reader. When we pick up an old novel, we’re not bringing the novelist into our world and deciding whether he or she is enlightened enough to belong here; we’re journeying into the novelist’s world and taking a look around.” The author is not a guest at our table; we are a guest at hers.
