Friday, March 25, 2005

Art After 9/11

As CNN notes, Saturday, the latest novel from one of my long-time favorite authors Ian McEwan, is getting some superlative reviews. From what I've read so far, only the NYT's Zoe Heller seems less than effusive. Here's an excerpt and an interview from NPR.

Could this be the first real post-9/11 novel? Or does that honor belong to Roth's Plot Against America. (I haven't read it.) Any other ideas ya'll?

What about other art forms? Music, poetry and so on? I know Green Day's American Idiot can't be all she wrote. Of course, as I noted here before, there's Spingsteen's The Rising, and Steve Earle has been staking his claim on a couple of albums now. I seem to remember reading recently about a classical composer who took cell phone calls from 9/11 and sewed them into his piece. I may be thinking of John Adams's On the Transmigration of Souls, which won the 2003 Pulitzer for music.

Poetry, I keep coming back to Galway Kinnell.

What, if anything, in the world of art and letters on the theme of 9/11 has gripped you?

Update: here's a Pitchfork article on The Pop Culture of 9/11.

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