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Transatlantic Literature and Culture After 9/11: the Wrong Side of Paradise

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Transatlantic Literature and Culture After 9/11: the Wrong Side of Paradise Copyrighted matrial – 978–1–137–44320–5 Introduction, selection and editorial matter © Kristine A. Miller 2014 Individual chapters © Contributors 2014 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2014 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978–1–137–44320–5 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Transatlantic literature and culture after 9/11 : the wrong side of paradise / edited by Kristine A. Miller, Utah State University, USA. pages cm Summary: “Looking back on a decade of the US-run and UK-supported ‘war on terror’, this volume examines how transatlantic literature and culture have challenged notions of American exceptionalism since 11 September 2001. The essays look not only at but also beyond the compulsion to relive this moment of terror, whether in recurring episodes of silencing trauma or repeating loops of media images. Conceiving of 9/11 as both a uniquely American trauma and a shared event in global history, the collection re-examines Ground Zero through the lenses of imperial power and cosmopolitan exchange. The book’s subtitle challenges readers to engage this perspective by rethinking the paradox of paradise, a condition of both never-ending bliss and everlasting death. As the self-appointed economic and military gatekeeper of an imagined global paradise, America plays a dangerous moral and political game. This volume asks whether the United States has perhaps chosen the wrong side of paradise by waging war on terror rather than working for global peace”— Provided by publisher. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–1–137–44320–5 (hardback) 1. American literature—21st century—History and criticism. 2. English literature— 21st century—History and criticism. 3. September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001, in literature. 4. September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001, in mass media. 5. September 11 Terrorist Attacks, 2001—Influence. 6. Psychic trauma and mass media. 7. Terrorism in literature. I. Miller, Kristine, 1966- editor. PS231.S47T73 2014 809’.93358—dc23 2014021126 Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India. Copyrighted matrial – 978–1–137–44320–5 Copyrighted matrial – 978–1–137–44320–5 Contents List of Illustrations ix Notes on Contributors x Acknowledgments xii Introduction: The Wrong Side of Paradise: American Exceptionalism and the Special Relationship After 9/11 1 Kristine A. Miller Part I Empire 1 Paradoxical Polemics: John le Carré’s Responses to 9/11 17 Phyllis Lassner 2 The (Inter)national Bond: James Bond and the Special Relationship 34 Jim Leach 3 221B–9/11: Sherlock Holmes and Conspiracy Theory 50 Brian McCuskey Part II Cosmopolis 4 Behind the Face of Terror: Hamid, Malkani, and Multiculturalism after 9/11 71 Lynda Ng 5 “Scandalous Memoir”: Uncovering Silences and Reclaiming the Disappeared in Mahvish Rukhsana Kahn’s My Guantánamo Diary 90 M. Neelika Jayawardane 6 Joseph O’Neill and the Post-9/11 Novel 110 Matthew Brown 7 An Interview with Joseph O’Neill 129 Laura Frost Part III City 8 9/11 Theater: The Story of New York or the Nation? 141 Lesley Broder 9 Flying Man and Falling Man: Remembering and Forgetting 9/11 159 Graley Herren vii Copyrighted matrial – 978–1–137–44320–5 Copyrighted matrial – 978–1–137–44320–5 viii Contents 10 “I’m Only Just Starting to Look”: Media, Art, and Literature After 9/11 177 Crystal Alberts 11 Archifictions: Constructing September 11 198 Laura Frost 12 The New Grotesque in Jess Walter’s The Zero: A Commentary and Interview 221 Anthony Flinn Bibliography 238 Index 257 Copyrighted matrial – 978–1–137–44320–5 Copyrighted matrial – 978–1–137–44320–5 Introduction The Wrong Side of Paradise: American Exceptionalism and the Special Relationship After 9/11 Kristine A. Miller Writing in the New York Times one week after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, British historian Niall Ferguson compared the World Trade Center and Pentagon bombings to the London Blitz during World War II: “Viewed from England, what happened last Tuesday looked not like Pearl Harbor II, but like the London Blitz” (“The War”). Even viewed from the United States, the attacks looked more like a civilian assault than a military “Pearl Harbor redux” (Apple). Almost immediately, the media began compar- ing American politicians at Ground Zero with British leaders on the World War II home front: while “New York’s governor and mayor did their duty by sticking to their posts and reassuring their fellow New Yorkers live on television, recalling King George VI during London’s blitz” (Safire), President George W. Bush “didn’t seem sure of where to go” after the attacks, even though he, “like the British royal family during the blitz, needed to reassure people with his presence” (Dowd). These historical parallels included civil- ians as well as politicians; according to the New York Times, “Touring the smoking ruins of the World Trade Center, politicians from Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain made poignant references to similarities they saw between New Yorkers’ courageous reactions to the Sept. 11 attacks and the steely resolve of Londoners during the Blitz.” The article includes excerpts from “historical accounts of the Blitz” and juxtaposes images of the World Trade Center wreckage with photos of St Paul’s Cathedral under fire, praising both British and American “Moxie Among the Ruins” and thus foregrounding the paral- lels between the Nazi Blitz on Britain in 1940 and the al-Qaeda attack on America in 2001 (Sharkey). The parallels here are between not just past and present attacks on civilians but also past and present political responses to those attacks. Even before al-Qaeda hijacked and crashed the four American planes in 2001, President Bush and Prime Minister Blair had carefully modeled their contemporary political alliance on the “special relationship” between the US and UK that Winston Churchill “adopted […] as official policy in 1943–4” (Reynolds 64). 1 Copyrighted matrial – 978–1–137–44320–5 Copyrighted matrial – 978–1–137–44320–5 2 Kristine A. Miller Bush and Blair decided to hold their first meeting after the President’s 2001 inauguration “inside Holly Cabin at Camp David,” where “[d]ecades earlier, President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill planned the Allies’ invasion of Europe in World War II […]. The historic symmetry was intentional” (Keen). In the 1940s, the hyperbolic language of anti-Nazi propaganda emphasized “that World War II was a just war,” perhaps even “the most legitimate war ever fought” (Andersen 19, xxii); according to Churchill, the alliance between the US and the UK allowed the Western world powers to “walk together in majesty, in justice and in peace” (White and Wintour) because they were acting as “powerful defender[s] of freedom and democracy” (Reiter 112). After September 11, 2001, a day on which Great Britain suffered casualties surpassed only by those of America,1 the nations’ leaders united in what they described as another “Good Fight” (Andersen xxii): Bush’s “War on Terror” (“State”) became for both him and Blair a “battle for and about the ideas and values that would shape the twenty-first century” (Blair, A Journey 345). When Bush proclaimed an American “crusade” against the “Axis of Evil” (“Remarks”), Blair vowed to “stand shoulder to shoulder” with the US against “this new evil in the world” and urged all the “democracies in this world […] to fight it together and eradicate this evil completely” (“Full Text”), even though he acknowl- edged the “unfortunate nature” of Bush’s choice to invoke the crusades (A Journey 363). Blair emphasized the parallel between the past alliance against Nazi Germany and the present alliance against al-Qaeda by giving Bush a bust of Churchill as a symbol of their nations’ continued special relationship in this new war on terror (Lovell).2 The term “war on terror” is particularly fraught, since the words can emphasize either the abstraction of fighting a feeling or the experience of fighting a battle, depending on whether or not one capitalizes “war” and “terror.” In The “War on Terror” Narrative, Adam Hodges analyzes the politi- cal significance of this rhetorical choice, explaining that the capitalization of “War on Terror” turns the phrase into “more than a convenient meta- phor”; the US response to 9/11 becomes instead “a proper noun referring to a real military war,” a noun that “capitalization imbues […] with historical cachet.” Citing “much of the reportage on Fox News,” he argues that “the capitalization emphasizes both the authenticity of the ‘war on terror’ qua war and its nature as a discrete and inclusive campaign” (100).
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