Uncategorized | January 31, 2004

I was thinking about the ways in which September 11 will be worked into creative writing, particularly fiction, in the coming years. I’ve read a few short stories dealing directly with 9/11, and they seem not to work so well. My sense with this fiction (as with as, for instance, Bruce Springsteen’s post-9/11 album The Rising) is that not enough time passed between the event itself and artistic attempts to make sense out of it. So I wonder how much time needs to pass before Big Events can successfully be addressed in novels and short stories. Or maybe, more subtly, September 11 has already left its indelible impression on literature. In my own fiction I find that my “Post 9/11” fiction feels different, somehow, than my “Pre-9/11” fiction. Hard to put my finger on it. It’s not that any of my fiction has anything to do, really, with September 11. Just that the world tilted a little bit differently after that day, and so has my fiction. I wonder if other writers feel the same.