The Job Of The Novel

I Am Closer To The Pacifist Side, In That I Think That The British Response To German Aggression, Which Was To Try To Starve The Continent Into A State Of Revolt And To Terrorize German Civilians With Bombing Raids, Was Part Of The Total Catastrophe.

In The Novel, I Can Change Things And Simplify, And Make Events Work Towards Whatever Meanings I'm Trying To Get At More Efficiently.

I Like Shelves Full Of Books In A Library, But If All Books Become Electronic, The Task Of Big Research Libraries Remains The Same - Keep What's Published In The Form In Which It Appeared.

There Was A Lot Of Maneuvering On The Part Of The Roosevelt Administration To Get The Stars Aligned So That That Attack Would Happen. There's Just No Question About That; You Don't Even Have To Look At The Decoding Of Diplomatic Cables Or Anything Else. Fdr's Own Admiral Thought It Was A Bad Idea To Have The Fleet Confined In One Place Way Out In The Middle Of The Pacific.

Some After-the-fact Storytelling Is Inevitable, And, In Fact, Very Good And Useful. But Then We Want Always To Be Able To Enrich The Stories, Or Maybe Change The Stories With A Fresh Infusion Of Specificity.