And Marx spoke of the fact that socialism will be the kingdom of freedom, where man realizes himself in a way that humankind has never seen before. This was an inspiring body of literature to read.

To put the point sharply: If an informer in the French underground who sent a friend to the torture chambers of the Gestapo was equally a victim, then there can be no right or wrong in life that I understand.

By the time I came down from Yale, I was already more radicalized and had begun to read New Masses.

By the time I was at college, I became very alert to the question of racial discrimination, and I remember one of my first writing attempts had to do with a lynching.