Increasing the Volume on Post-9/11 Literature By Clair King-Sheehan Thesis submitted for PhD Degree University of Limerick Supervisor of Research: Dr David Coughlan Submitted to the University of Limerick, September 2015 Table of Contents Abstract v Declaration vi Acknowledgements vii List of Appendices viii List of Abbreviations ix Introduction 1 The Twin Towers 1 Role of Overtly Political Fiction in the U.S. 11 Reds Under the Beds: A Twentieth Century Crisis 26 Theoretical Relationship between Politics and Literature 29 Changes in Approach 35 The Novels 40 Chapter 1: “What the?” 44 Why the Question? 52 Foer’s Vision 54 The Falling Man 58 Foer’s Metaphor for America 63 Nothing to Declare 66 Competing Political Ideologies 73 Unreliability or Miscommunication? 83 In Safe Company 87 Comparisons on a sensitive subject 94 ii Chapter 2: Faint Echoes of DeLillo – The Fiction of Politics 102 The Power of Images 119 A Grief Observed 126 Falling Man 132 Bill Lawton – the enemy 134 Ernst Hechinger – the European Perspective 138 David Janiak – The Muted Spectacle 143 Hammad – the three Positions of the “Other” 145 “On Marienstrasse” 146 “In Nokomis” 148 “In the Hudson Corridor” 148 Point Omega 150 The Fall: DeLillo’s Post-9/11 opus 161 Chapter 3: Updike’s Reluctant American 165 Terrorist (2006) 183 Terrorist vs. Terrorist 188 The Troublesome Other 195 A Questionable Jewish Persona 204 Enter the Woman 209 The Schizophrenic Other 216 Chapter 4: Kingsolver’s Hidden Intention 222 September 2001 – 224 Now versus Then 231 The Gap 244 The Lacuna 249 iii BACK HOME 265 “In the beginning were the howlers” 275 Conclusion 278 Appendix A 285 Bibliography 288 iv Abstract: “Increasing the Volume on Post-9/11 Literature” By Clair King-Sheehan The intention of this study has been to engage directly with several major novels that appeared in the wake of the fall of the Twin Towers. Although it is concerned with the trauma of the 9/11 events, its main interest is with the narratives’ more elusive political voices. It will evaluate work of highly regarded authors whose novels are closely associated with the 9/11 era. It will examine how they spoke out or evaded the issues being presented in the media of the time. The texts most recognisable as 9/11 narratives, Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and Don DeLillo’s Falling Man, will be analysed in order to interpret how they directly engaged with the issues of the day and their immediate aftermath. While it is easy to see how Foer’s novel might be useful in working through the trauma, this research has imagined another perspective from which to view 9/11 using this novel as a vehicle. And although DeLillo’s Falling Man provides an accurate fictional portrayal of the experience, it does not overtly display the political prescience of this writer’s previous work. In Terrorist, John Updike moved beyond the actual day and tried to help the American people visualise the experience from outside the conventional U.S. demographic. However, his novel faltered in its mission to accurately represent the “othered” character within U.S. Society. Barbara Kingsolver’s allegorical comparison of the Bush administration and the reprehensible mid-twentieth century McCarthy period is perhaps the most politically motivated text examined here. Nevertheless the dense layer of historical- political allegory she employs manages to conceal the voice which on previous occasions had proved strident in defence of what she believed. This study argues that the politics of the era caused writers to constrain their political viewpoints in their definitive novels on the subject of 9/11. v Declaration This thesis is submitted to the School of Culture and Communication and the Graduate Studies Office of the University of Limerick in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. It is entirely my own work and has not been submitted to any other University or Higher Education Institution. Where use has been made of the work of other people it has been fully acknowledged and referenced in the Works Cited. Signed: Date: _____________________________ Clair King-Sheehan vi Acknowledgements Dedicated to Conor Without whom none of this would have been possible I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the following people who have supported me during this project: to my children, Conor and Robyn, whose confidence in me never seemed to waver; to Kim Arnold, whose knowledge and guidance is deeply appreciated and has been invaluable throughout all my years of study; to my many friends at The University of Limerick, especially, Jack Fennell, Helen Basini, Sarah Hunt, Caitlin Ryan, Lonnie Costello, Geraldine Sheridan, Robert O’Keefe, Joanna McDarby, Mary McCarthy, Cora Lynch, and Amy Healy, who have rewarded me with the pleasure of their company and listened patiently as I worked through the PhD process; finally, I wish to acknowledge the unfailing support of my supervisor, Dr David Coughlan, who showed a great deal of insightful expertise tempered with patience. vii List of Appendices Appendix A: Clair Sheehan email interview with Barbara Kingsolver, November 2013 viii List of Abbreviations A: Americana and Other Poems, collection by John Updike AM: Americana, novel by Don DeLillo AVM: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, text by Barbara Kingsolver C: Cosmopolis, novel by Don DeLillo ELIC: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, novel by Jonathan Safran Foer FM: Falling Man, novel by Don DeLillo HTT: High Tide in Tucson, text by Barbara Kingsolver “IRF”: “In the Ruins of the Future,” essay by Don DeLillo L: Libra, novel by Don DeLillo P: Players, novel by Don DeLillo PO: Point Omega, novel by Don DeLillo “PoH”: “The Power of History,” essay by Don DeLillo “RW”: “Reflections on Wartime,” article by Barbara Kingsolver SW: Small Wonder, text by Barbara Kingsolver T: Terrorist, novel by John Updike TL: The Lacuna, novel by Barbara Kingsolver TN: The Names, novel by Don DeLillo U: Underworld, novel by Don DeLillo “VRE”: “Varieties of Religious Experience,” short story by John Updike ix Introduction The Twin Towers The idea to develop a World Trade Centre in New York City was first mooted at the end of the 1940s just as the victorious U.S. soldiers were returning home from war. America’s credibility as a land of freedom and opportunity had never stood taller, and American hubris, along with its architecture, was also on the rise. As New York City “was already thought of as a center of world trade,” the idea of promoting the area as a commercial hub seemed intrinsic to the ethos of the growing metropolis (Robins 13). Thus envisioned, the World Trade Centre project got to the drawing and costing stage “before being shelved” when the development’s “huge scale and the concept of demolishing and rebuilding a sizable chunk of Manhattan” became too much of a burden on the city’s resources (13). It would take nearly two decades for the project to be considered viable once again and ground-breaking architect, Minoru Yamasaki, employed to oversee the construction. The proposed size, structure, and cost of the World Trade Centre plan made it a controversial subject throughout its construction. But these were not the only concerns New Yorkers and other Americans had with the proposed edifice. Contemporary architectural historian and philosopher, Lewis Mumford, criticised the new development as an “example of the purposeless giantism and technological exhibitionism” which appeared to many to be overtaking New York (342). Because of the hubristic air the buildings were felt to emit they would remain contentious even after the cost and scale of the project became purely reflective. Formally opened in April of 1973, the Twin Towers would continue to be problematic structures from their final completion in 1977 until their momentous erasure from the New York skyline on September 11th 2001. 1 Although the expression “out of the blue,” as the title to Versluys text emphasises, has been often used to describe the events of 9/11 they were not completely unanticipated. When examined retrospectively the root causes of the attacks can be traced back in time to the Crusades. In modern terms however, the conflict and current tensions were made manifest by the two World Wars of the twentieth century. The turmoil created in 1948, when so “many Arabs felt shocked and betrayed by the support that the U.S. government had given to the Zionist cause,” gave rise to serious conflict in the Arab world which has never truly abated (Wright 11). Robust academic argument continues around the origins of the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the later part of the twentieth century, much of which has been ably compared in studies that debate East/West polemics.1 Placing theoretical contentions aside however, historical evidence clearly foregrounds the political and theocratic issues that led to nineteen Islamic insurgents commandeering four American airliners and infamously piloting them into the World Trade Centre in New York, the Pentagon, and one other abortive attempt at an unspecified target in Washington D.C. While these attacks were unprecedented within the United States, their inevitability, if not their exact method, had not been difficult to predict and can be systematically linked retrospectively to actions that occurred more than half a century earlier in the Middle East. Although it can be argued that these ideologies have been in conflict since the Middle Ages, the more recent defeat of the Arab world during “The Battles of the Sinai” (1948) was to “shape the Arab intellectual universe” into the twenty-first century (Wright 11). The writing of Islamic scholar and theorist, Sayyid Qutb, along with the “politics he would invent” (Wright 17), are argued to have laid the modern foundations for the development of Islamic 1 See Geoffrey Nash’s Writing Muslim Identity, John Gray’s Al Qaeda and What it Means to be Modern, Malise Ruthven’s Fury of God, and Meghnad Desai’s Rethinking Islam, among countless others.