331
See also: The Corrections 328–29 ■ The Reluctant Fundamentalist 339T
he terrorist attacks in New
York and Washington on
September 11, 2001 caused
a huge change in the political and
cultural landscape, which literature
was sure to tackle sooner or later.
But at first many authors struggled
with its enormity; after the attacks,
leading novelists Martin Amis,
Ian McEwan, and Don DeLillo all
commented on how the nature of
their job felt as if it had changed
and become more difficult in
ways they did not yet understand.
Authors chose different methods to
try to make sense of the topic.A new way of looking
In Extremely Loud and Incredibly
Close, Jonathan Safran Foer (1977–)
explores the aftereffects of 9/11
through a young boy, Oskar Schell.
Nine months after the attacks, in
which his father was killed, Oskar
suffers from a depression, which he
says is like wearing “heavy boots.”
Finding a key left by his father, he
embarks on a quest around New
York to discover what the key is for,
meeting many curious charactersalong the way. The novel contains
unusual stylistic choices: pages
are black, or several in a row are
left white; words are circled in red;
and many photographs appear—
of objects, famous personalities,
and the Twin Towers themselves.
Through such techniques, Safran
Foer tries to make us look afresh
at 9/11, to find a new way of seeing
something so terrible that has also
become so familiar. ■CONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
I REGRET THAT IT
TAKES A LIFE TO
LEARN HOW TO LIVE
EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE (2005),
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER
IN CONTEXT
FOCUS
Post 9/11 AmericaBEFORE
2001 Jonathan Franzen’s
The Corrections, published
on September 11, 2001,
foreshadows the concerns of
American literature after 9/11.AFTER
2007 Don DeLillo’s Falling
Man is published, detailing
the effects of the World Trade
Center attacks on the life of a
middle-class survivor.2007 Mohsin Hamid’s The
Reluctant Fundamentalist
depicts the way in which
a middle-class Pakistani-
American financial analyst is
drawn toward radicalization.
2013 Thomas Pynchon’s
Bleeding Edge is published,
a lively novel touching on
financial malfeasance during
the dot-com boom, in which
9/11 takes place more than
halfway through the story.There are so many times
when you need to make a
quick escape, but humans
don’t have their own wings,
or not yet, anyway.
Extremely Loud and
Incredibly CloseUS_330-331_Guest_LoudClose.indd 331 08/10/2015 13:11