A Failure of the Imagination: Diagnosing the Post-9/11 Novel: A Response to Richard Gray
Top Cited Papers
- 19 August 2008
- journal article
- Published by Oxford University Press (OUP) in American Literary History
- Vol. 21 (1) , 152-158
- https://doi.org/10.1093/alh/ajn040
Abstract
Richard Gray's “Open Doors, Closed Minds: American Prose Writing at a Time of Crisis” offers a sharp and necessary diagnosis of the American novel since the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. Erudite and wide-ranging, Gray's essay combines a sense of historical sweep with a keen understanding of the specific dilemmas of the present. Particularly concerned with the ethics of literature—that is, with literature's potential engagement with questions of difference, otherness, and strangeness—Gray underscores the failures of most 9/11 novels to move beyond “the preliminary stages of trauma” by doing more than simply “registering that something traumatic … has happened.” A central problem, as Gray convincingly demonstrates, is that while American novelists have, along with all manner of pundits, announced the dawn of a new era following the attacks on New York and...Keywords
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