Trumbo's decency and restless intelligence were evident in his pacifist 1939 novel, Johnny Got His Gun, and they enliven portions of his last book, Night of the Aurochs. Unhappily, portions are all there are. Trumbo never completed the novel…. It cannot have been an easy or pleasant task [to edit Trumbo's notes]. For one thing, the subject—the Holocaust—is too monumental to be apprehended in fragments, if at all. Second, Trumbo's idea—the investigation of evil—seems to have been too demanding for his fading powers. (p. 32)

Anyone who has read or thought about Germany's past has wondered about the nature of guilt and whether a whole nation can be condemned….

Wondering, however, does not produce art. Nor does it engender craft. The resonances and implications of the Holocaust are too large for a work whose center is a collage, not a character. Again, I am aware that...