Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Best books on 9/11
In order to prepare intelligently for the 10th anniversary of 9/11 next year I've tried to assemble a list of good or at least moderately interesting books on the subject, not necessarily literary and some with only indirect connections. Please help me out with your suggestions, comments or criticisms.
Overall, I've little on the topic due to lack of time and sources. I’d appreciate you the reader’s help in assembling a more complete and useful list.
The 'Age of Vanished Normalcy...'
Probably the single most essential title, at least IMO, is Martin Amis's sharply satirical and flagrantly biased The Second Plane (from whom the above amusing subtitle is taken). I’m surprised at how few Americans know about it. Short and acerbic, it is full of understated outrage at the most famous Islamist atrocity. If you're looking for wishy washy guilt-stricken introspection along the lines of "God, whatever did we do to those poor people that they hate us like this?" this book is not for you. And, as you find in Amis’ best work, there is here a kind of rich sarcasm that covers its object of dislike with trenchant ridicule worthy of a Swift.
Amis's satire and irony is acceptable because under it -- as in the case of all good satirists (Lord Rochester, Kurt Vonnegut and the aforementioned Dean) -- lies a great deal of moral indignation.
Amis however is not a perfect critic of Islamism since his strong pro-Israel anti-Palestinian biases are linked to and weaken his arguments. It's unfortunate that Amis takes the single most legitimate Arab cause and blackens it by associating it with an issue which is completely disconnected (Hamas and Al Queda are not the same organization). This is guilt by association and Amis should know better.
Yet his book is one of the few by a public intellectual writing in commonsense prose for everyone that doesn't shirk 9/11; this is itself is admirable. I salute Amis's willingness to take on the tough dirty topics that kinder, more polite, more politically diplomatic (read: correct) critics avoid... Odd too that some of these statements -- which IMO may be some of the most powerful statements on that disaster -- are written by a Brit. Why don't we have an Amis or two in our ranks? Well, we do -- Christopher Hitchens, but he's British too! Why can't we native born American do more when it comes to expressing in prose indignation (or better shock physical and metaphysical) at the attack on our basic rights and intellectual traditions?
The other point about Amis is that he doesn't just shoot off his mouth and indulge his political paranoia but fully lends his literary imagination to the event. And this is a considerable literary imagination at work. "The Last of Days of Mohammed Atta" is a creepy masterpiece, taking us into the revolting, intransigent, sick and sickening mind of Atta up until his final moments of jet-fuel barbecued consciousness.
Falling Man based on the famous photo
Falling Man by Don DeLillo is much better than the NY Times critic, at least, allowed. Those finding fault with Delillo's fragmentation of reality and distantly cool attitude toward his characters ought to consider: what other serious writer or even semi serious writer has attempted to deal directly with the incident? Shown us full bodied characters moving through all that trauma, and tried to make sense of it in basic human terms? I just wish his main character had done something more significant than drop out of life to play world poker as a symbol of his post 9/11 alienation.
The Quran just picked up in Penguin Paperback edition the Dawood translation. I'd like to decide for myself if the Koran advocates violence or not.
Terror And Liberalism by Paul Berman mentioned in Amis's book, this essay is famous as a statement by a self-described liberal attempting to bring a philosophical perspective to the analysis of terrorism. Obviously I haven't read it.
An emancipated Somali woman encounters distrust
Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Impressive, informative memoir/autobiography by a brilliant Somali women who successfully excavated herself from a repressive and (yes) Muslim upbringing, and had the audacity to leave her religion. This has intriguingly brought down on her the condemnation of orthodox Muslims and outraged multiculturalists (Buruma, TG Ash etc) who seem to want all tribal people to remain quaintly tribal so they can be condescended to (i guess). Hirsi's undeniable personal achievment of extricating herself from ferocious Somali tribal life and its traditional repression of women (aided by Islamic tradition going in the same direction) -- and by her own efforts becoming a modern European in mind and spirit – including election to the Dutch Parliament -- makes a great story and one full of resonance in the context of the rise of Islamic militancy and the increasing presence of Somalia in the news.
Having read Infidel, I can say that it is an impressive work indeed from many angles and deserves to be read for its intrinsic value as an autobiography in depth of a brilliant and fascinating woman-- and for its searching portrayal of what it's like growing up in an African patriarchal Muslim context.
Buruma’s unsatisfactory analysis of an Islam inspired atrocity
Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance. Ian Buruma. This title can be paired with Infidel since they touch on a common person (Hirsi), theme (Islam in the modern world), and a shocking homicide. It's perhaps not directly relevant to 9/11 but then again perhaps not totally irrelevant either. For those who like myself, were shocked and puzzled by the event (and didn't know the background on the principals, especially Van Gogh), the book is strangely dissatisfying.
You get the feeling that Buruma is doing everything in his power to make the brutal murder of Van Gogh by the Muslim fanatic Mohammed Bouyeri a very Dutch act, which it is obviously not. As for the subtitle with its monitory phrase "limits of tolerance," one finds no strong defense of the society and its open values that this non intellectual Islamist knifer could not understand and tried to destroy. Quite the contrary, Buruma seems to hint everywhere at Dutch complicity in violence (however buried in history) and oppression of its own citizens and others, from drunken football fans (wwh we know is short for fanatics) to the Hals and Rembrandt paintings of Dutch masters (these ultra respectable looking patriarchs were of course guilty of many hidden crimes).
Buruma uses the example of superficially similar political murder committed around the same time of the gay politician Pim Fortuyn by an animal rights activist to indicate that both murders were "principled" and hence equivalent, somehow related to excessive Dutch moral rigor. Ridiculous? Yes, obviously, but Buruma goes on and on in this vein.
In his effort to naturalize the horrible butchery (gunshots, machete, and dagger all used on Van Gogh on a main thoroughfare of Amsterdam), Buruma even gives Bouyeri literary cachet by reciting the long genealogy of Western terrorists and terrorism in the fictions of Dostoevsky and Conrad though there is no evidence Van Gogh’s killer was a reader except of sectarian tracts. He gives us a synopsis of Conrad’s novel The Secret Agent and suggests that the most sordid character The Professor is an prototype for Bouyeri. Rhetorically he asks, “How is it that characters out of Conrad came to Holland?” The fact is Bouyeri is not at all a character "out of Conrad." First of all he didn’t read Conrad, and wasn’t influenced by any high literary artifacts at all as Buruma implies. If he had, he would be more interesting, but he didn’t it seems. He was just one more brainwashed clone spouting the familiar Islamist cliches. So why does Buruma make this preposterous statement? A much better imaginary comparison would be Charles Manson. Like Manson, Bouyeri was obsessed with bloodletting -- one can imagine the two murderers enjoying watching beheading videos together in prison. But reading the cerebral Conrad? Give me a break. No, better, give Conrad a break! He doesn't deserve to be associated with this sordid, uncerebral murderer.
If you're waiting for the powerful condemnation of the revolting murder of an annoying but decent man (Van Gogh’s painted as a free spirited joker and deliberate provocateur as well as a loudmouth TV and film personality) and the free speech for which that man died -- well, it's not going to come: instead, at the end of the book you have the vague impression that all of Holland (but especially the Red Light District) murdered Van Gogh -- and thus the actual killer's crime diminished, almost excused. What is especially disgusting and reprehensible in the crime (read the book for more details) is precisely its Muslim element.
Buruma's comments on the above mentioned Hirsi Ali, who wrote the film script, which Van Gogh produced,(for which he was murdered and she threatened with death) are similarly unsatisfactory -- he blames her for her part in the tragedy because -- are you ready for this? -- Hirsi left her religion! Instead of applauding her for her guts in deserting a religion she found hostile to her ideals (and which often makes apostates pay with their lives), he implies that this prevented her from becoming a force for moderation in the Muslim community. Is it not just a little bit arrogant, and a tad hypocritical for a white male secularist to force Hirsi back into her religious cage -- ex-Muslim Somali Hirsi Ali, whose great achievement in life -- her personal emancipation -- required precisely that: freedom from religion?
This brings me to the final point: the book’s indebtedness to the all pervasive doctrine and set of ideological reflexes called PC. This can be seen most obviously in Buruma’s multicultural faith. He never suggests, for example, that fanatical Islamists (fanatic is a word he never applies to Muslim extremists) have no place in Dutch society – nor that Van Gogh’s killer is an evil butcher who got more and better than he deserved from Dutch society (he’s still alive serving a life sentence). Curiously, in the one case where PC principles are fitting—in that of Hirsi Ali, Buruma misses an opportunity. What could more appeal to a true liberal’s sense of justice and fitness than the career of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, an oppressed woman of color who overcame the obstacles of a ferociously patriarchal culture and strict Islamic upbringing to bravely say no to the said authorities and declare herself a free, self-determining individual? What could be a more inspiring story for a multiculturalist than the story of a woman who rose of poverty and violence to become a Dutch citizen and member of parliament? But no, for Buruma, none of these accomplishments are impressive – why? Because, as noted above, Hirsi lost her chance to reform other moderate Muslims by giving up her religion! Secondly, and this is speculative on my part perhaps the real reason for the subtle condemnation of Hirsi is that in Buruma’s view she has violated the canon of PC orthodoxy which is that European countries are responsible for the chaos of former colonies – of which Somalia, Hirsi’s native land, is one. He and the rest of the PC crowd can’t forgive her for making a powerful case for the opposite view – that at least in the case of her native Somalia which she knows – the problems of that country have been self-created.
There is something holier than thou in this work of Buruma’s that ultimately reeks to high heavens.
And this from a man who dealt brilliantly (I thought) with Japan's and Germany's war guilt in The Wages of Guilt, and with many other sensitive international issues in Japan, China and Southeast Asia -- with unusual insight and with what seemed to me unshakable integrity. Why so? Any theories out there? Let’s take a multi-cultural view of Buruma himself and see if we can’t find some Dutch excuse for him -- he is Dutch after all.
Occidentalism: A Short History of Anti-Westernism. Ian Buruma & Avishai Margalit. Buruma again! Picking up and scanning the contents of this small book, and noting the many references to 9/11 and Osama Bin Laden, I now remember that it was written largely as a response to 9/11 though it is theoretical and scholarly rather than a journalistic polemic. Overall preferable to Murder in Amsterdam. In fact read this title, and Buruma redeems himself!
