#crit lit

1. Catharine Mckinnon looks at September 11th through the lens of gender theory: Women's September 11th. Mckinnon talks a lot about the "bit by bit genocide" of the ongoing war on women in the world, the redefinition of war (against a non-state actor), and then has an awesome quote: "Women have no state, are no state, seek no state—this being the Virginia- Woolf-meets-September-11th moment in this discussion." She draws the conclusion that when thinking about gender in 9/11, "who men are to women is who they are".

2. Art Speigelman interviews about his New Yorker cover: "when we were in the thick of it, it just felt like Mars Attacks!, Is Paris Burning?, and I had no perspective. For a while, I thought I should go down and look for bodies. At the same time, since The New Yorker was looking for images, I thought, "Well, I'm more trained to look for images than for bodies."

3. Susan Sontag's short and furious editorial in the New Yorker, for which she got hellllla flack: http://groups.colgate.edu/aarislam/susan.htm

4. lol my Chalk response for Chute's class on the new yorker editorials:

"Susan Sontag's article in the New Yorker provided a much-needed differing perspective on the September 11th tragedies. Though not exactly sensitive, Sontag's piece rang true amid the overwhelming number of cardboard patriotic responses to September 11th. John Updike's editorial, for example, I found to err on the side of melodramatic, his emphasis on marriage, off-putting--although I suppose little else should be expected from Updike. The overall tone of the critical responses within the two weeks directly after 9/11 veers between an attempt to express personal loss, and an attempt to pay respect to the collective grief of the nation. If one thing unites the discourse immediately-post-9/11, it is a wariness of tone, an unwillingness to take anything more or less than a somber stance. Sontag's editorial thankfully broke that mold, though she was lambasted for it. Sontag sums up the role of the government too harshly when she writes, "Those in public office have let us know that they consider their task to be a manipulative one: confidence-building and grief management" (New Yorker, 2001). However, she correctly identifies the odd commodification--if I can call it that--of grief in America post 9/11. Grief became conflated with patriotism (e.g. flag pins on politicians), and thus the real grief over a real tragedy became appropriated by some hegemonic force into a tool for politicians, a marker of something other than pure empathy. While other authors try to balance cultural expectations about 9/11 discourse with personal experience, Sontag rather fearlessly attempts to expose, and halt, the dominance of those cultural expectations in literary responses.   Besides stunting the emotional width of 9/11 discourse, the new, proper form of grieving led to not only a self-conscious patriotism, but an acquiescence to authority which politicians have since used to swing elections in their favor, or do worse. Randolph Bourne, in his 1917 essay "War Diary," explains the dangers of acquiescence: "acquiescence seems sufficient to float an idefinitely protracted war for vague or even largely uncomprehended or unaccepted purposes" (Bourne, 1917). Looking back, both Bourne and Sontag appear as voices of reason amid storms of uncertainty."

5. Roger Rosenblatt's famous claim that 9/11 would end the age of irony. I still find this kind of bitter, like a grandfather scolding his grandchildren--"I told you your face would stay that way if you kept doing that!"

6. I have a PDF of Reebee Garafolo's (reeeebeeee!) "Pop Goes to War" about "the trajectory of the new social role for popular music in the post-9/11 era" and, essentially, the rise of the popstar as a social comforter. it's particularly salient now, with the influx of popstars-who-care type songs like "firework," "born this way," "we r who we r," etc. If anyone wants the pdf (eileen, i'm lookin at you) i can email it to you. Although I doubt anyone will.

7. Zadie Smith's "This is How it Feels to Me". Zadie takes on James Wood. Her assessment of reading Delillo is perfect. and also, it's zadie smith so don't you just want to know how writing after 9/11 feels to her? yes.

8. The Lost Philip Roth interview I'm not a huuuge philip roth fan (i don't like how obsessed he is with his own literary project) but this interview is worth a listen or at least a perusal:

"PHILIP ROTH: And it doesn’t stop. Even now, it’s impossible to watch a baseball game without having to listen to “God Bless America” beforehand or without being asked to remember “our heroes.” I feel like saying: stop, dignity demands that you stop it."