Re: JCO: 9/11 fiction

Thanks, Kimberly. "The Mutants" was a great story that arrived ahead of the
pack. Would anyone else like to discuss it here on line this month?
Another good story about 9/11 was by John Updike -- my library is in
chaos right now, so I don't have it at hand. I think it was entitled "True
Believers" or something like that. It views that horrific day through 4 points of
view: a John Updike surrogate watching the towers collapse from his daughter's
apartment in Brooklyn, an elderly woman watching her fellow passengers mutiny
aboard the "4th" plane that crashed in rural Pennsylvania, a doomed office
worker in one of the towers, and, finally, one of the highjackers hanging out in
a Florida bar a few days before the attack.
Aside from those two outstanding examples, I haven't come upon any
memorable story or novel that directly deals with 9/11. But I'll bet someone out
there in Tone Clusters land can provide some other examples.
By the way, which filmmaker do you think would be best able to handle
the 9/11 movie in the "hallucinatory" manner JCO mentions. David Lynch gets my
vote. I've been smitten with his "Mulholland Drive" this winter. I think
he's a very moral storyteller underneath all his famous weirdness.
Cyrano

In a message dated 3/8/2005 7:28:38 AM Eastern Standard Time,
kstarrett5@comcast.net writes:

<< By no means is that an easy task, of course. Joyce Carol Oates, the author
and critic whose recent short story "The Mutants" dealt with a woman trapped
in her Lower Manhattan apartment on 9/11, said novels might not be the art
form best able to address the events of that day.
"This does seem to be about the right time for these novels to be coming
out," Ms. Oates said. "But the greatest art form to deal with this might be film,
because it can capture the hallucinatory nature of the long hours of that
siege."

>>
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