• 1  George W. Bush, « Address to the Nation on the Terrorist Attacks », September 11, 2001, Public Pap (...)

1There is a way of coming to terms with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 which has emerged as the predominant course of action in the United States. This mode of discourse, which could be called « Nine-Elevenism », is supported by governmental institutions, the mainstream media, and especially by those who have re-visited and re-created the event through fiction, that is, novelists, film directors, scriptwriters, cartoonists, etc. Nine-Elevenism can appear in different guises: demonizing and generalizing discourses, in which a new identity label that emerged after 9/11 – a religious, racial and ethnic mix merely based on physical appearance and conformed by Muslims, Arabs, Middle Easterners, and whoever looks like Muslim, Arab or Middle Easterner – becomes the constructed « evil » object of both suspicion and retaliation; victimizing and heroizing discourses, in which individual stories of loss, mourning, trauma, survival and rescue, well through arguments ad misericordiam appealing to pity, or by extolling the heroic deeds mostly performed by white male officers, are generalized when reaching the public domain – « Today our nation saw evil… And we responded with the best of America… Our country is strong »1 –, and turned into dangerous, blindly patriotic discourses resurrecting the old imperialistic rhetoric of the « manifest destiny »; and finally, « hystoerical » contextualizations of the event, which, obsessed with memorializing the 9/11 date, reformulate contemporary history in Dickensian terms like « everything has changed, nothing has changed » while neglecting to specify « for whom » it has changed, and more importantly « for whom it has not ». The present article will analyze how some US 9/11 fictional works – novels, films, TV series, short stories, and comics – have rewritten the historic event under these ideological limitations imposed by Nine-Elevenism.

• 2 Nick Sullivan and Karen Robinson (ed.), September 11^th Crisis Response Guide, Human Rights Educatio (...)

3Amnesty International confirmed that in the immediate week following 9/11 there were at least 540 reported attacks on Arab-Americans in the United States, dozens of mosques were vandalized, and there were also more than 200 reported attacks on Sikhs – citizens of Indian descent who practice Sikhism and wear turbans and beards because of their creed2.

• 3 Daniel J. Sherman and Terry Nardin (ed.), Terror, Culture, Politics: Rethinking 9/11, Bloomington, (...)

5Coincidentally – or not –, such dangerous and erroneous social synecdoche – considering one portion as the whole – is ubiquitous within US 9/11 fictions. The representation of terrorists and fundamentalists within the corpus of American novels, movies, TV series, short stories and comics dealing with the events of September 11, 2001 is minimal, and in the few instances these individuals are represented, it is mostly to convey anti-Muslim or anti-Arab rhetorics. Daniel J. Sherman and Terry Nardin point to this fact in Terror, Culture, Politics: Rethinking 9/11 remarking that « there is a market for popular novels and movies… which rather than investigate on the attacks’ direct causes, it is oriented towards an imaginary enemy that is « evil »because it opposes American ideals of individualism, devotion to family, patriotism and self-sacrifice »3.

• 4  George W. Bush, « Remarks at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, on the Terrorist Attacks » Septe (...)

6The minimal presence of terrorist figures within the entire production of US fictions inspired on 9/11 can respond to a variety of reasons: to what is the principal message – chosen among many  – that has been attempted to convey through fiction to a general audience in order to suit mainstream appetites – the vast majority of US 9/11 narratives are stories of loss and recovery, starring White Americans –; to what color – mostly White – are the authors – mostly male – whose 9/11 works have reached the popular status of best-sellers or movie hits in the US; and finally, to who seems to deserve to be depicted – and who does not – in such 9/11 works, as the majority of these fictions serve as homage to the victims. President Bush’s remark that « Freedom itself was attacked this morning by a faceless coward »4 does nothing but deny a « face » to the terrorists, and as Judith Butler points out in Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence:

• 6  Jonathan Markovitz, « Reel Terror Post 9/11 », Film and Television After 9/11, Wheeler Winston Dix (...)

8In the few cases that terrorist figures appear in US 9/11 fictions, the two most frequent expressions employed to refer to them in these works allude to the terrorists’ supposedly archaic way of living – with caves as one of its principal signifiers – and their innate evil condition. These two same characteristic images were precisely the most recurrent ones within President George W. Bush’s post-9/11 public discourses when he referred to the terrorists. Both depictions had an enormous influence on the way the 9/11 terrorists were collectively imagined in the United States. As Jonathan Markovitz underlines in « Reel Terror Post 9/11 », « The stark rhetoric of the Bush administration’s quest to eradicate evil finds a perfect correlate in films that cast A-list Hollywood stars in battles against the calculating and murderous violence of always highly racialized terrorist “others” »6.

• 7  Stan Lee, « The Sleeping Giant », 9/11 The World’s Finest Comic Book Writers and Artists Tell Stor (...)
• 8 Ibid, p. 178.

9Comic editors were among the first in arranging collective works that offered a response through fiction to the events of September 11, 2001. One example where it can be observed how the institutional influence actually operated upon fictional works is the comic « The Sleeping Giant » by Stan Lee. The former president of Marvel Comics, and co-creator of such popular comic characters as Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four or the X-Men, depicted now in « The Sleeping Giant » a planet inhabited by anthropomorphic animals ruled by a « gigantic, mighty… tender and caring » elephant – it could not be a donkey – who « spent much of his time in happy slender » due to the reigning peace of his kingdom7. The text remarks how among all the animals there were also scattered many mice with whom « the elephant king and all his subjects were content to coexist », and it depicts in a new panel some mice in working custom: an executive running late, a cook, a baseball batter with the Yankees uniform, a couple of farmers and an overworked cobbler8. Considering that eventually some « evil mice » will set fire to the elephant’s cathedral, it is not clear whether these initial mice are Muslims, Arabs or Middle Easterners. The fact is that their difference from the rest of animals who are « content » to live with them is made evident proposing the dichotomy of either terrorists or hardworking immigrants assimilated into the American way of life in order to be « tolerated ».

• 9 Ibid.
• 10 Ibid.
• 11  Laura Bush, « Radio Address to the Nation », November 17, 2001, <http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/re (...)
• 12  Stan Lee, « The Sleeping Giant », p. 180.
• 13 Ibid.

10It is when the comic portrays the « evil » mice – one of them even wears a 666 on his Islamic garment – raising their hands in anger, surrounded by flies and skulls, and « fleeing, and hiding » in dirty places like some public baths with the Islamic crescent moon on its door « because their mouse holes were scattered throughout the planet »9, when Bush’s post-9/11 depictions of the terrorists get materialized in the most obvious way. Additionally, the comic’s depiction of some female mice wearing buckets over their heads while one angry mouse beats one of these female mice with a bat10 echoes Laura Bush’s appropriation of feminist discourses to justify the War in Afghanistan as when she remarked on a radio address to the nation on November 17, 2001 that « the brutal oppression of women is a central goal of the terrorists »11. Finally, after the evil mice set fire to the elephant’s cathedral, « the fury and the power of an awakened rampaging vengeance seeking elephant » is eventually portrayed12. The comic’s description of how « once the hiding places had been discovered, the raging elephant thundered to the scene, stomping mightily on each hole with all his unimaginable strength and power, trapping and crushing the deadly mice within… [until] the evil mice had been eliminated »13 does not but encourage support for the US military forces in Afghanistan to exercise the highest brutality in their mission.

• 14  Jasbir K. Puar and Amit S. Rai, « Monster, Terrorist, Fag: The War on Terrorism and the Production (...)

11On October 3, 2001, the popular NBC’s TV series The West Wing opened its third season with an especial episode inspired on the 9/11 attacks. « Isaac and Ishmael », written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Chris Misiano, was aired not a month since 9/11, and four days before the Operation Enduring Freedom started the War in Afghanistan with a US-led aerial bombing campaign that almost immediately prompted international concerns over the number of Afghan civilians killed. In such a critical moment, it was the television medium that had firstly created the 9/11 official discourse, the same that now produced the first mainstream 9/11 fictional work that indoctrinated the American audience on international terrorism and the war that was approaching. The plot of « Isaac and Ishmael » takes place in two very differentiated settings: on the one hand, a guided group of children who is visiting the White House cannot leave it for a few hours because of a terrorist threat, occasion which allows many Presidential staff members including the fictional President and First Lady to drop by and display their vision of terrorism to the schoolchildren, and by extension, to an infantilized audience; on the other hand, an Arab-American who works for the White House is pointed as a suspect of terrorist activities, and after being interrogated, racially-profiled and insulted by white men, he turns out to be innocent. After receiving a lame apology for the racist remarks, he is rewarded to go back to work for the government that has just humiliated him. As Jasbir K. Puar and Amit S. Rai underline in « Monster, Terrorist, Fag: The War on Terrorism and the Production of Docile Patriots », this « double-framed reality » is directed towards the production of « normalized and docile patriots »: while the school children and the audience are taught « why War means Peace in Afghanistan », Arab-American spectators are warned that the best way to avoid being confused with terrorists just due to the color of their skin consists in making themselves the vivid image of American patriotism14.

• 15  Alan M. Dershowitz, « In Love with Death », Guardian, June 4, 2004.
• 16 Ian Buruma and Vishai Margalit, « Occidentalism », New York Review of Books, January 17, 2002.
• 17  Jean Baudrillard, The Spirit of Terrorism, New York, Verso, 2002, p. 15, 20.

12Another element that became very frequent in the post-9/11 public official discourse was the identification of Islam as a religion of hate and intrinsically linked to the concept of death. This singular equation was advocated by the media, as when the Guardian put the prosecution’s case against Muslim suicide bombers wondering « Why do these overprivileged young people support this culture of death...? The time has come to address the real root cause of suicide bombing: religious and political leaders who are creating a culture of death »15; or when the New York Times remarked that « when contempt for bourgeois creature comforts becomes contempt for life itself you know the West is under attack »16. The academic world was not either exempt of enacting this in vogue relation of Islam to the idea of death, as when Jean Baudrillard, in his analysis of 9/11 titled The Spirit of Terrorism assured that, after World War II, « Evil regained an invisible autonomy », and it henceforward « developed exponentially… and a ghostly enemy emerged, infiltrating itself throughout the whole planet, slipping in everywhere like a virus, welling up from all the interstices of power: Islam… Terrorism, like viruses, is everywhere »17.

• 18  John Updike, Terrorist, New York, Knopf, 2006, p. 3.

13This inclination to identify Islam with the idea of death, and respectively the West with life was also very present among US 9/11 popular fictions, finding its most reputed representative in John Updike’s novel Terrorist (2006). It tells the story of an eighteen-year-old New Jersey Muslim boy who, in constant inner struggle between his faith on the one hand, and the rest of his American life on the other – represented by his love for a classmate, his studies, and his job as a truck driver – gets recruited by an imam into a terrorist plot to bomb Lincoln Tunnel. If the novel opens with the protagonist’s critics to his infidel classmates and teachers who are identified as « devils [that] seek to take away my [his] God »18 , it ends up with the protagonist renouncing both the attack’s implementation and his monolithically portrayed faith thanks to his eventual and elated contemplation of how beautiful life is in the United States. The novel’s stereotyped – stereotyping – and racially biased portrait is not limited to the problematic Arab protagonist, as his best friends in the novel are an oversexed African American female teenager and their embittered but noble Jewish teacher. Moreover, the novel’s final rejection of Islam as a whole due to its intrinsically alleged link to the practice of terrorism, confirms how the accustomed authoritative US literary voices are not the most objective locus to turn to in search for some racially unprejudiced representation of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and their possible causes.  

• 19  Wheeler Winston Dixon (ed.), Film and Television after 9/11, Southern Illinois University, Carbond (...)

16Regarding the first set of narratives that explore the emotional themes of loss and recovery, it is mostly constituted by works oriented towards « consumption », and in very few cases towards « reflection ». As Wheeler Winston Dixon remarks in Film and Television after 9/11, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were « commodified and repackaged, cheapened by commemorative plates or hastily assembled memorial videos… there was at least sixty memorial programs on television during the week of September 11, 2002, alone, all shown on national broadcast and cable television channels »19. This mode of creation based upon overproduction was also undertaken by writers like Karen Kingsbury, who in the lapse of three years wrote two novels about a fictional 9/11-firefighter’s widow – One Tuesday Morning (2003) and Beyond Tuesday Morning (2005) –, and an entire series of five novels recreating how the events of 9/11 affected the American Christian family of the Baxters – Redemption (2002), Remember (2003), Rejoice (2003), Return (2004), and Reunion (2004) –. This entire Kingsbury’s production of 9/11 « Harlequin » novels, openly very patriotic as the American flag is depicted on the cover of most editions, does not actually encourage reflection on the 9/11 events but serves as propaganda of explicit Christian themes while inciting to emotional rather than rational responses to these events.

• 23  Joyce Carol Oates, « The Mutants », I am no one you know: Stories, New York, HarperCollins, 2004, (...)

24Within this selection of 9/11 narratives starred by traumatic survivors, there are two works by two 20th century American canonical authors which result in a certain sense disappointing when considering both authors’ stimulating literary careers. I am referring to Joyce Carol Oates and Don DeLillo. Oates’s short story « The Mutants » (2004) portrays how a beautiful Midwestern blonde young woman, with an auspicious professional career in New York as a children’s book editor, and bride-to-be with her beloved and equally successful fiancé, ages twenty years on September 11, 2001 and becomes a « mutant being, primed to survive » while waiting in dark for several hours in her lower Manhattan apartment for her fiancé to come back. The protagonist is initially – and stereotypically – described as a blonde American goddess « with her dreamy golden aura as lightly borne as a cloak of Athena », whose inherent innocence is forwarded by the fact that « she carried it unaware, believing that the myriad daily glances of admiration she encountered in the city… and certainly the intense good fortune of her professional and personal life, were part of a general bounty shared by all, like the warm autumn air »23. Such idyllic pre-9/11 portrait is deliberately carried out to emphasize her traumatic transformation after the attacks into an animal in panic « hollowed eyed and gaunt yet wakeful, no longer the dreamy-eyed blonde », who eventually lights some candles, and while arranging them on the windowsills of all her windows, sees other candle lights in the windows of adjacent buildings « glimmering like distant stars… brave and festive in the dark ». Oates’s hopeful closure with these « brave » candles does nothing but make her short story of pre-9/11 innocence turned into post-9/11 courage a representative example of how fiction can reproduce in detail the national ideology cast by the media while shaping how the traumatic event is and must be perceived.

• 24  Mieke Bal, Narratalogy: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, Second Edition, Toronto, Universi (...)
• 25  Michiko Kakutani, « A Man, a Woman, and a Day of Terror », Books of the Times, New York Times, May (...)

25Much more complex in structure is Don DeLillo’s 9/11 novel Falling Man (2007), starred by a recently separated man who, after escaping from the World Trade Center, makes up with his wife while he starts an affair with another woman who also survived the attacks. Missing two of his weekly-poker-game friends who died in the attacks, and not being able to work through his post-traumatic disorder, the protagonist ends up leaving his family behind and going to Las Vegas to play poker indefinitely. Besides the author’s resistance to provide a happy, easy and « artificial » closure to his protagonist’s traumatic disorder, not à la Oates with her « brave candles », one of the principal assets of Falling Man is DeLillo’s innovative treatment of the temporal and spatial dimensions. It reaches its climax when towards the end of the novel, when the crash of the planes against the WTC is narrated in free indirect style, the figure of the narrator changes in the same paragraph from « he », the terrorist aboard the plane a few seconds before the crash to « he », the survivor in his office at the WTC immediately after the explosion. However, in spite of this stylish change of focalizors – focalizor understood as the agent whose point of view orients the narrative, as described by Mieke Bal in Narratology24 –, Falling Man pales in contrast with former DeLillo’s approaches to political violence through fiction. While Libra (1988) revisited the intricacies of the assassination of Kennedy and acted indeed as a counternarrative to the official discourse dictated by the Warren Commission, Falling Man does not but over-dramatize the more serene reflection portrayed in the 9/11 Commission Report. As the New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani stated in her review of DeLillo’s Falling Man, « Instead of capturing the impact of 9/11 on the country or New York or a spectrum of survivors or even a couple of interesting individuals », DeLillo leaves us with the image of « a self-absorbed man, who came through the fire and ash of that day and decided to spend his foreseeable future playing stupid card games in the Nevada desert »25.

• 27  Paul Chadwick, « Sacrifice », 9-11: September 11, 2001. Artists Respond. Volume One, Mike Richarso (...)
• 28  Paul Greengrass, United 93, Universal, 2006.

27Regarding how the 9/11 victims were immediately labeled as heroes in the public sphere, one just needs to take a look at the Ground Zero commemorative plate, which reads « To the Heroes of 9/11 » and contains the list of names of all the people – except the terrorists – who died in the attacks. Among all the 9/11 victims, those whose story has been more frequently re-created by fiction are the passengers and crew of the flight United 93, who are precisely those who rebelled against the terrorists and whose heroism could be more appropriately – and commercially – extolled. Paul Chadwick’s comic « Sacrifice » (2002), Peter Markle’s FOX TV Film Flight 93 (2006), and Paul Greengrass’s film United 93 (2006) are among the most popular narratives within this group, having the last one been nominated for two Oscars including the category of best director in 2007. It is very interesting to observe how the heroizing strategies adopted by these three 9/11 « aerial » works, which supposedly narrate the same events aboard the same plane, differ so much to one another: in « Sacrifice », the emphasis is placed on the « sacrifice » that the passengers and crew made as, according to the comic, they revolted against the terrorist not to save their own lives, but to save the lives of those inside the building targeted by the plane. The comic also introduces the passengers by referring to some of their « apparently » courageous features like « Beamer, a former football player », « Glick, the judo champion », or the most surreal « Bingham… who recently ran with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain »27; the FOX TV film Flight 93, on the contrary, appeals directly to pity the victims by focusing on the concept of  « family », well offering long shots of the passengers’ children, portraying a female passenger reading a book about pregnancy, or showing how the passenger’s relatives encouraged them to rebel against the terrorists; finally, United 93, while paying tribute to the passengers and crew’s  heroism, also focuses on exonerating both the Air Traffic Control Centers and the US military forces – additional protagonists of the film – of any responsibility concerning the plane’s crash. The film’s final note on the screen attempts to leave no doubt on this respect: « Military commanders were not notified that United 93 had been hijacked until four minutes after it had crashed. The nearest fighter jets were 100 miles away »28.

• 29  Patricia Leigh Brown, « Heavy Lifting Required: The Return of Manly Men », New York Times, October (...)
• 30  Zillah Eisenstein, « Feminism in the Aftermath of September 11 », 911–A Public Emergency?, Social (...)
• 31  Emily S. Rosenberg, « Rescuing Women and Children », History and September 11th, Joanne Meyerowitz (...)

28The efforts by the United States’ Ideological State Apparatuses in the Althusserian sense – the media, the government… – to impose the image of a « strong nation » brought with it a regressive restoration of a traditional, male chauvinistic paradigm in the public discourse. At home, the new heroism extolled the American male – and white – worker, be he a firefighter or a policeman, while there was little mention of women firefighters or heroic women in general. The New York Times sentenced: « The operative word is men: brawny, heroic, manly men. The male hero expresses the new selflessness of masculinism. Physical prowess is back in vogue along with patriotism »29. As Zillah Eisenstein denounced in « Feminism in the Aftermath of September 11 », « Women, who are busy trying to rebuild the lives of their families while they scramble to get to their jobs as well, are shunted to the side – seen only through the veil of motherhood and wifely duty »30. Abroad, US foreign policies reproduced the trope of rescuing women and children, which, as Emily S. Rosenberg posits, emerges « from a social imaginary dominated by a masculinized nation state that casts itself in a paternal role, saving those who are abused by rival men and nations »31.

• 32  Alessandra Stanley, « Once Again, the Tragedy You Can’t Avoid », New York Times, August 11, 2006.

29A good example of how 9/11 fiction replicated this We-are-a-nation-of-male-heroes pattern and helped to its overspread is Oliver Stone’s film World Trade Center (2006), which recreates the story of two Port Authority police officers trapped in the rubble of the towers and the desperation of their wives and children until they were eventually rescued by a former marine who was volunteering. It could be no one but Oliver Stone, the official re-teller of American History through popular yet ideologically questionable films, to direct this movie which, in regards to its reflection on the 9/11 events, it could perfectly have been about « trapped West Virginia miners or mountain climbers buried under an avalanche » as a New York Times critic remarked32. Indeed, Stone not only reproduces the stereotype of brave active men and awaiting passive women, but he also translates victimhood into a patriotic cry for war – the last image being an immense American flag – while encouraging military volunteerism.

• 33  Michel Foucault, « Il faut défendre la société»: Cours au Collège de France. 1976, Mauro Bertanni (...)

30In the lecture series titled « Il faut défendre la société » given at the Collège de France during the course 1975-76, Michel Foucault already warned against the dangers of what he called le discours historico-politique: a type of discourse that employs historical arguments to support pre-determined political goals33. It was indeed while contextualizing the events of September 11, 2001 into history when some of the most dangerous and warmongering affirmations were uttered by political leaders and media agitators. Firstly, the catching term « nine eleven » imposed itself triumphantly provoking such obsession with the temporal identifier that everything before or after this day seemed to lose importance. Where-were-you-on-9/11-? was « the » story, and acontextualized single-day histories monopolized mainstream attention while preventing reflection upon the possible causes and consequences of the events of that day. Secondly, while describing the global situation after the attacks, another historical acontextualization was to follow: the hyperbolic everything has changed. This grandiloquent generalization both in time and space reveals an ignorant and self-centred conception of history and the world affairs which does nothing but proclaim the American exceptionalism among the rest of nations. Moreover, such conceptualization of the « exceptional » circumstances of the 9/11 terrorist attacks served as a vehicle to justify certain « special » detentions, « special » foreign policies, and even « special » torture methods in detention camps that were dictated and exercised by the government of the United States. Thirdly, not few held themselves back for relating the events of 9/11 to other historical episodes. However, instead of references to former United States military actions in the Middle East, the most frequent comparisons were with tragedies such as the attack to Pearl Harbor, the Vietnam War and even the Holocaust. These dramatic comparisons of the events of September 11, 2001 with such former massacres and genocides recast the United States as the new victim to be supported in the international scenery, and promoted military actions based upon hysterical rather than historical appreciations.

• 34  Art Spiegelman, In the Shadow of No Towers, New York, Pantheon Books, 2004, p. 4.
• 35  Ibid, p. 1.

32Art Spiegelman’s comic In the Shadow of No Towers (2006), in spite of being very critical with how the United States government dealt with the 9/11 attacks, fell into some of these ahistorical descontextualizations described above. Among different panels related to each other by the connecting thread of 9/11, the most extensive one narrates Spiegelman and his wife’s desperate search for their daughter the very morning of 9/11. Spiegelman, who received the Pulitzer Award in 1992 for his animalistic representation in Mouse of how his father survived the Holocaust, could not help making explicit references to this genocide in his 9/11 comic, as when he portrays himself expressing his affection for New York city by remarking « I finally understand why some Jews didn’t leave Berlin right after the Kristallnacht! »34. Spiegelman’s occasional representation of some New Yorkers included himself as mice in In the Shadow of No Towers establishes direct links with his former work and the genocide it narrated, magnifying in this way the scope of the 9/11 attacks as when he accompanies a drawing of the World Trade Center in flames with the text: « In our last episode, as you might remember, the world ended… »35.

• 36  « The War Against America: an Unfathomable Attack », editorial, New York Times, September 12, 2001
• 37  Joanne Meyerowitz (ed.), History and September 11th, Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 2003, (...)

33 It was the American media the first in making exaggerated statements when placing the events of 9/11 in historical context. For example, a New York Times editorial on September 12, 2001 described the attacks as « one of those moments in which history splits, and we define the world as before and after »36. As Joanne Meyerowitz remarks in History and September 11th, « history never rips in two. Before and after are never entirely severed, even in the moments of greatest historical rupture. The discontinuities of the past always remain within the whole cloth of the longue durée »37. Nevertheless, such conception of history as divided into before and after 9/11 permeated the corpus of 9/11 fiction. Paul Auster’s novel The Brooklyn Follies (2005) is not a 9/11 work per se, as 9/11 does not appear in it neither mentioned nor allegorically. However, Auster added a posteriori an epilogue titled « X marks the spot » which appears in most editions and in which the eventually elated protagonist steps out onto the street to go to work at eight o’clock on the concrete morning of September 11, 2001,

• 39  David Simpson, « Telling It Like It Isn’t », Literature After 9/11, Ann Keniston and Jeanne Follan (...)
• 40  Claire Messud, The Emperor’s Children, New York, Knopf, 2006, p. 386, 388, 391.
• 41 Ibid, p. 386.
• 42 Ibid, p. 373.

35Another example of a fictional work conveying this reductionist tendency to split the world’s history in two as a consequence of the 9/11 attacks is Claire Messud’s novel The Emperor’s Children (2006). It is definitively one of the most superficial approaches to the 9/11 events that has been made, yet it reached the top of the best-seller list in the US in 2006. David Simpson could not have titled better his essay on Updike’s and Messud’s 9/11 novels in Literature After 9/11: « Telling It Like It Isn’t »39. The Emperor’s Children is a Manhattan « society » novel that focuses on how the 9/11 attacks did not actually affect the lives of a privileged Upper West Side family. This aspiring social satire is filled with melodramatic and grandiloquent statements about 9/11 by most of its distinguished yet uninspired characters, especially when comparing the « world’s » situation before and after the attacks: « It’s a difficult time… Good luck. We all need it these days… That’s how life is. It’s how it was. I don’t know how anything is anymore… we don’t know how it will turn out… The end of the world. A sign from God »40. The novel reaches indeed its climax of frivolity when the female protagonist comments to her college friend: « Do you realize that, when I put this Kleenex in my pocket, the world was a completely different place? »41 Besides such display of deep historical reflection, one is not caught unaware when another character compares the 9/11 survivors she observes from her apartment’s window with a Vietnam War photo: « She stood at the window… there were still dust-covered, bewildered people… like refugees of war, she thought, remembering the famous Vietnam photograph, the little naked girl fleeing the napalm »42. This passage of the « window » is actually representative of the entire novel, in which 9/11 is just a far landscape at the back, and the really bad things happen outside and to others.

• 44  Sam Glanzman, « There Were Tears In Her Eyes », 9/11 The World’s Finest Comic Book Writers and Art (...)

38The last fictional 9/11 piece that will be addressed here is, as I said before, Sam Glanzman’s comic « There Were Tears in Her Eyes ».  It seems a good choice to give a closure to this article with this work as it actually contains demonizations, victimizations, and outrageous historical contextualizations all in regards to the 9/11 attacks. The comic portrays a grandfather answering his grandson’s questions about 9/11 while they go for a walk outside their country house two days after the attacks. To the child’s question of « what kind of people do these things? », the old man does not hesitate in comparing the terrorists with 15th century Romanian Prince Vlad the Impaler, a figure in which the legend of Dracula was inspired due to the Prince’s alleged blood thirst. The grandfather describes then to the child some of the Prince’s appetites, and while remarking that « Dracul also means Devil », the comic depicts some men impaled and a face portrait of the almond-eyed Prince Vlad whose prominent nose, turban, long black hair and moustache turn him into the vivid image of Osama Bin Laden. After this demonizing characterization so out of context, the child asks his grandfather whether there will be a war like he was in. Then, the old man recalls « his » war while the comic portrays explicit images of WWII like a pile of corpses in Auschwitz. The grandfather utters: « By waiting, did we allow this? Yes, allowed. By refusing to act early enough…It could have been prevented. Hitler and his butchers could have been stopped had we and other law-abiding nations acted earlier ». The comic closes with a drawing of the Statue of Liberty crying with the Twin Towers in flames at the back while the text reads: « Will we wait? Until it’s too late? »44