I'm reading the novel "Falling Man," which is the new novel by Don DeLillo, who is one of my favorite authors. The book follows the life of a 9/11 survivor and his family just after the attacks. I read a scene this evening which I found particularly poignant. In this scene, Keith, the main character is watching the news with his wife as they play the World Trade Center videos.He said, "It still looks like an accident, the first one. Even from thisThis scene is so profound because it is so ubiquitous. This is exactly everybody's experience. Perhaps you remember and it felt the same for you. You were sitting in a student center on a college campus and the first tower was burning and you thought, it's an accident. It's happened before. A B-17 hit the Empire State building. This is the same type of thing. And you wondered how, with our modern technology, an accident like this could happen. But it's an accident of course. It has to be. But then you see the second plane, and it happens so fast but you are thinking fast too, so before you even see the planes you think, Oh God, it's not an accident. And as you see the flames you know that every thing has changed forever. And isn't it fitting that in the twenty-first century we should die in real time on cable news.
distance, way outside the thing, how many days later, I'm standing here thinking
it's an accident."Because it has to be.""It has to be," he said."The way the
camera sort of shows surprise.""But only the first one.""Only the first," she
said."The second plane, by the time the second plane appears," he said, "we're
all a little older and wiser." (135)
Isn't this your experience too? Isn't this the cultural work of great literature, to put into words our collective experience. This book isn't as well done as some of DeLillo's others but this is where it is successful. You read the book and you feel...consoled somehow, because you're glad to know that you're not the only one.
