It is only now that we can see the effects of September 11. Weeks and months after the event, it was only reactions and simple fast responses. Now, the three central powers we look towards (Our own, Australia, our traditional, The U.K., and our new partner, The U.S.A.) have altered our lives. Indeed we are not living under extreme physical deprivations (no rationing of butter yet). But instead we are deprived of intellectual wealth.
This first deprivation has been through out leaders. They have silenced opposition, denigrated thought and invented enemies. Not a racist construct, instead it’s tribal. Those not like us are “evil” or “amoral”. Meanwhile in popular culture we are faced with bland alternatives, hyped upped dullness. These have been infinitely detrimental to debate and thought. Yet at the same time, that bastion of intellectual thought, the novel, has yet to surrender the defining interpretation of our times.
Most attempts to interpret both the events of September 11 and its aftermath have not come close. Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections only achieved it by default, only encapsulating the post-millenial dread we all felt we knew before the event. Meanwhile, other writers well within the empire Paul Auster, Rick Moody, and Jonathan Raban halt their books before the event, some teasingly close.
Those that explicitly deal with it are no better, Jonathan Safran Foer tries to do another genre bending exercise in Incredibly Loud And Extremely Close, but only emerges with a murky condemnation of the event and an attempt to link it to Dresden (superbly covered by Vonnegut in his numerous fiction and biographical works), however there are some saving graces which we will return to. Even more disappointing is Jay Mcinerny’s The Good Life that starts on September 10, then shifts to September 12. Symbolic, but rather hollow. Indeed Raban doesn’t deal with the events in his latest Surveillance, rather the new world and ends on an improbable, yet appropriate apocalypse.
Having taken apart these writers, not every attempt to dissect the modern age has been a failure. In fact those artists that have addressed our different world the best have done it through absurdity. Be it the sound cut up vandal Cassetteboy with his repositioning of Frank Sinatra as one of the hijackers on Fly Me To New York. Similarly, hip hop artist Sage Francis’ Makeshift Patriot that amongst others has the protagonist hang himself on a flagpole, in search of the ultimate me-tooism of jingoism, sees the reality of these new times. In film, the Beckett-lite of Jarhead also sees the war being fought (although it was the previous Gulf War) as ultimately meaningless.
It is perhaps a tall order to expect such life shattering moments from writers. Norman Mailer’s The Naked And The Dead, and James Jones The Thin Red Line experiences were ones where half of the world (women) were largely excluded from and indeed only experienced by a sliver of those remaining. The world was unaware of the horror of the fighting until their books came out. Largely the same story with the Holocaust experience. Meanwhile, we were treated to S11 in real time on every channel, then replayed over and over to absurdity.
Similarly, previous books set in these life shattering times have been closely linked to real deaths, their own and those of their comrades in front of them. They saw and experienced real and present terror, not the diffused terror of our new world. Perhaps our longing to see deaths in the Middle East is to soothe our psyche, they are being killed the way we imagine ourselves to be.
Returning to the home front, we only have a few writers game enough to grapple with these themes. Andrew McGahan’s Underground deals with a dystopic future Australia, while Richard Flanagan’s The Unknown Terrorist sees the new world through the prism of the new anti-terror laws. Both of them try to shoehorn their political concerns into genre writing. Both writers have experienced critical and actual sucess, McGahan is the only writer to grow from the media anointed “grunge” movement of the 1990s, through to perceptive insights into Queensland politicians and land rights. Flanagan has taken a different route, dealing with race relations and environmentalism through florid and angry prose.
Their two new books seem to be odd avenues. Their normally considered writing taking second place to the obvious mouthpieces of their characters. Their cause seems to be “woe is Australia”. Flanagan does make the rough point that our desensitisation to extreme images indicates our cultural shift.
But yet, they do have some success. Flanagan’s central character’s much derided covering herself in money rings true. This is the world we live in. Similarly, McGahan’s final trick of the narrator locked into an empty Parliament House for all its preposterousness feels right. Thus the central idea, that post S11 texts have their most powerful moments when absurdity takes over, Foer’s flipbook of a man falling up the WTC at the end of the book has greater meaning than the previous 300 pages of misdirected angst.
There may be no correct way to respond to the September 11, and the ensuing tragedy of Iraq will be an obvious blight on civilisation’s history. However, absurdity seems a nice fit. To look to the past, what would you prefer, Nero fiddling while Rome burns, or Caligula appointing a horse to the Senate? I’d prefer the braying sound of the honourable oat eater on the left.
Sunday, April 1, 2007
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