 | Out of the Blue: September 11 and the Novel Subjects: Fiction -- 21st century -- History and criticism; September 11 Terrorist Attacks 2001 in literature; September 11 Terrorist Attacks 2001 -- Influence; Psychic trauma in literature; Writers have represented 9/11 and its aftermath with varying degrees of success. In Out of the Blue , Kristiaan Versluys focuses on novels that move beyond patriotic clich#65533;s and cheap sensationalism and provide new insights into the emotional and ethical impact of these traumatic events--and what it means to depict them. Versluys focuses on Don DeLillo's Falling Man , Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers , Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close , Fr#65533;d#65533;ric Beigbeder's Windows on the World , and John Updike's Terrorist . He scrutinizes how these writers affirm the humanity of the disoriented individual, as opposed to the cocksure killer or politician, and retranslate hesitation, stuttering, or stammering into a precarious act of defiance. Versluys also discusses works by Ian McEwan, Anita Shreve, Martin Amis, and Michael Cunningham, arguing for the novel's distinct power in rendering the devastation of 9/11. Kristiaan Versluys is a professor of American literature and culture at Ghent University, Belgium, and a regular visiting professor at Columbia University. He is the author of The Poet in the City: Chapters in the Development of Urban Poetry in Europe and the United States and the editor of Neo-Realism in Contemporary American Fiction . |
