George Steiner , literary critic for The New Yorker and The New York Times , had written about the Holocaust in some of his previous books , including Anno Domini ( 1964 ) , Language and Silence ( 1967 ) and In Bluebeard 's Castle ( 1971 ) . Many of the ideas Steiner expresses in The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H. were reworked from these earlier works . Steiner told New York Times editor D. J. R. Bruckner that this book arose out of his lifelong work on language . " Central to everything I am and believe and have written is my astonishment ... that you can use human speech both to bless , to love , to build , to forgive and also to torture , to hate , to destroy and to annihilate . "