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The American Novel After
September 11th
by James Wood
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One
of the most reprehensible responses to the events
of September 11 was an article written by Jay
McInerney, supposedly the creator of "the
definitive modern New York novel." I never
doubted this particular writer incapable of
profundity, but I had thought he might at least
be able to fake it. Apparently depth is yet
another mimesis that lies beyond him. Soon enough
he was telling us that on that very Tuesday,
still shaken and shocked, he took lunch at Time
Café, "a once fashionable dining
spot." And who should immediately enter
but "the actress Jennifer Beals… a camera
around her neck, looking slightly dazed."
Later, McInerney repairs to the apartment of
another New York novelist, Bret Easton Ellis.
On Bret's kitchen counter, he sees an invitation
to a literary party, and blurts out, "I'm
glad I don't have a book coming out this month,"
a statement he knows to be "a selfish and
trivial response to the disaster, but one I
thought he would understand." And oh, he
does, he does: Bret replies that he was just
thinking the same thing, and then Jay says to
Bret: "I don't know how I'm going to be
able to go back to this novel I'm writing."
He adds, to the reader: "The novel is set
in New York, of course. The very New York which
has just been altered for ever."
It
is tantalizing that the one good outcome
of the terrorist horror might be the
suspension of a Jay McInerney novel.
But is McInerney right? Will the horrid
alteration of America's greatest city
also alter the American novel?
One
is naturally suspicious of all the
eschatological talk about how the
time for trivia has ended, and how
only seriousness is now on people's
minds—not least because the people
saying it are usually themselves trivial
and, as in McInerney's piece, are
thus unwitting arguments against their
own newfound seriousness. Doubtless,
trivia and mediocrity will find their
own level again, in novel-writing
as in everything else. And besides,
the "New York novel"—as
opposed to the novel set in New York—is
a genre of no importance at all. If
I live the rest of my life without
having to come across another book
like Bret Easton Ellis's New York
novel, Glamorama, I will have
very happily been what Psalm 81 calls
"delivered from the pots."
This is an excerpt.
To read the rest, please continue your travels
in the Republic by purchasing
No. 11, December 2001.
James
Wood's bio is forthcoming.
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