The great 9/11 novel - is it necessary?
Apropos of Don Delillo’s new 9/11-themed novel, Falling Man, Jerome Weeks wonders, on his Book/Daddy blog, whether such a thing is even necessary.
Why do we expect our writers to produce the “Great 9/11 novel” anyway?
Has there ever been a “great” Pearl Harbor novel — the event most often compared to the Towers’ collapse? From Here to Eternity is about all that memory can conjure up, and it surely doesn’t qualify as great.
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I’m not in any hurry for a fictional re-conception of 9/11. There are plenty of ways to grapple with it in book form already — politically, strategically, even in its engineering and city planning. And we still don’t even really know how the war in Iraq will be viewed by history: idiot-devious neo-con escapade or valiant first beachhead for re-shaping the region on a more egalitarian model?
Must the novel compete in the news-media information overload? Or does it risk irrelevance if it doesn’t? Many novels offer a retreat from the shouting match, a solace, but if they can also cut through the din, is it necessary to demand they do it in such a newsworthy fashion? Can’t it still participate meaningfully in the culture without being … so immediately pertinent? It’s as if we want the damned things to be useful and relevant, to help us now.
