9/11 Fiction from Three Different Perspectives
A Look at Popular Post-9/11 Novels
After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, authors not only used 9/11 as a backdrop for their novels, but also as a main component of the plot itself. By creating fictionalized characters and stories based on a universally shared event, writers were able to express their feelings about what had occurred and readers were able to relate to the book on a highly personal level.
Post-9/11 novels also had one beneficial element that their non-fiction counterparts lacked: the ability to craft a more pleasing ending to the story, as opposed to the news-laden and information overload of reality present in other books. By presenting readers with characters who were coping with the same events that they were, audiences could connect with (and consequently heal alongside) their fictionalized counterparts.
Here is a look at three different post-9/11 novels and their differing perspectives:
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer (Mariner, 2006. ISBN# 0618711651)
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer is definitely the most reader-friendly and feel-good of the three books. Written from the point-of-view of the main character, Oskar Schell, a nine-year-old boy who lives in New York, this novel traces Oskar's journey across New York City to solve a mystery while at the same time coping with his father's death on September 11 in the World Trade Center.
Oskar's child-like views of the events of 9/11 are both heartbreaking and hopeful. He refers to the day his father was killed as "the worst day" and somehow manages to exemplify the typical nine-year-old's reaction to such tragedy yet at the same time is wise beyond his years.
Falling Man by Don DeLillo (Scribner, 2008. ISBN# 1416546065)
Easily the most literary of the three novels, Falling Man by Don DeLillo, tells the story of two men and their enormously varied perspectives on events before, during and after 9/11. In a story that is summed up in the first chapter when DeLillo writes so simply, "this was the world now", this book eloquently sums up the idea that everyone changed as a result of 9/11, each in their own way.
The men, Keith Neudecker a survivor of the attacks on The World Trade Center and Hammad a young man who happens to be one of the hijackers of the planes that hit the towers, each lend their emotions, experiences and resonings to the novel resulting in a multi-voiced, beautifully written novel.
Windows On the World by Frederic Beigbeder (Miramax, 2006. ISBN# 1401359884)
Windows On the World by Frederic Beigbeder is the most controversial of the three novels on this list. Although it has been referred to as tasteless and full of crude metaphors, this novel offers a unique perspective of the events that transpired from a French author's point-of-view.
The novel opens with the morbid line, "You know how it ends: everybody dies", though this is an important and telling introduction. While the previous two novels viewed the events of 9/11 in a kinder and gentler manner, Beigbeder holds nothing back. While this may spark controversy, it also provides readers with an alternate perspective: that of the blunt anger of reality.
Windows on the World is an emotional read that reminds us vividly and thoroughly that life is not an action film that gets tied up neatly in the end by a Bruce Willis-like character or superhero. Life and the tragic events that transpire are often ugly, inhumane and cut to the bone, just like this novel.
All three of these novels are centered around one single day and one general event, and yet they are each written from a different frame-of-reference, lending each their own unique voice and literary interpretation of modern history.
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
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Falling Man by Don DeLillo
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