“Face to Face: Confronting the Torturers”—streamed on the PEN Web site to audiences worldwide—was a 90-minute, late-night program of readings at Joe’s Pub, a cabaret venue associated with The Public Theater, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Squeezed against the bar or one of the little tables, one could settle into a “classic gimlet,” accompanied by a “classic bruschetta with tomatoes,” while imbibing 11 tales of classic horror. I was able to stay for all but the last of the readers (the American writer Randa Jarrar, who read “Revenge,” by the Palestinian poet Taha Muhammad Ali); I also never got to hear the promised remarks by Jameel Jaffer, of the co-sponsoring ACLU. Given the fact of the ACLU’s participation, I expected to hear...