Re: JCO: 9/11 fiction

Hi Cyrano,

 

I remember that Updike story -- from the New Yorker, I think? It was the first and one of the only pieces of fiction I had read that dealt with the 911 tragedy. I haven't read "the mutants" but will seek it out.

 

And I couldn't agree more that David Lynch is the man for the job. I've adored Lynch ever since the first I saw "lost highway." In fact when I read your question re who would be the most able filmmaker it was Lynch who sprang to mind even before you suggested him.

 

Best,

 

--
Kimberly Starrett
"Sharing an office is like being in a Beckett play...after everything has been said you still must go on talking."
Edmund White, in "The Farewell Symphony".

 

-------------- Original message --------------

> 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 thos! e 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 righ t 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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