Codes, Ciphers and Cryptanalysis

Codes, Ciphers and Cryptanalysis

Justin A. Day (pseudonym) with  Jan Weeks published The Centerville Code forty-two years too late for me.   It is a 10-13 year-old boy adventure book where the heroes require facility in cryptanalysis––the reading of codes­­.  It is the type of story I read as a...
Robert Olen Butler and A Small Hotel

Robert Olen Butler and A Small Hotel

Robert Olen Butler (A Small Hotel) I mean being a writer is like being a psychoanalyst, but you don’t get any patients.   Al Alvarez Robert Olen Butler’s novel A Small Hotel is a gem.  It is a diamond.  It is an intense moment-by-moment psychological study of a...
Towards the next novel

Towards the next novel

On reading War and Peace (Tolstoi), On War (Clausewitz) and War (Sun Tsu) March 15, 2011 In writing my next novel “Wounded,” I have been thinking how to create the eminence grise, Alexander Soroka, is a disillusioned Bolshevik Russian Jew who had had a...