evidence: What, then, appealed to me, a young novelist and historian, and made me bombard Sobell in 1982 with phone calls and letters asking him to meet with me? Looking back, I’d point to three personal traits, at once extravagant and enigmatic: his insouciance ("[S]o many years have passed. I’m not sure my memories of Julius and Ethel will have the clarity you need," was his mock-naïve reply to one of my letters); his spontaneous sense of humor ("Whoo! I just want to have fun!"), so different from the manner of the Communist martinets in the party I had known, dull and colorless, grimly smoking their pipes; and his familiar Bronx Jewish accent, slightly more refined than Bernie Sanders’ but with the same cadences and inflections (and the same contempt for America mixed with the same studied lack of interest in Jewish life or survival).