Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Anglo-American Writers Responses to September 11

£6.99

Symbiosis 11.2 3-26
Author: Daniel Lea
Pages: 25

'Aesthetics and Anaesthetics: Anglo-American Writers’ Responses to September 11' by Daniel Lea, explores how British and American writers have responded to the events of September 11, 2001, through their literary works. Originally published in Symbiosis: a Journal of Anglo-American Literary Relations, this essay delves into the immediate and long-term impacts of 9/11 on cultural politics and literary expression. Lea examines the roles of novelists and poets in making sense of the tragedy, the aestheticisation of trauma, and the transatlantic dialogue of empathy and solidarity that emerged. This scholarly work is essential for readers interested in contemporary literature, cultural studies, and the intersection of art and politics.

Essay Excerpt

"Al Qaeda’s attack on New York’s World Trade Center on 11th September 2001 sent seismic reverberations through the geopolitical bedrock of the nascent twenty-first century, but its impact on cultural politics was, and continues to be, equally momentous. Despite Norman Mailer’s recommendation to Jay McInerney to ‘wait 10 years…it will take that long for you to make sense of it’, recent years have begun to see the creative reflex being exercised with increasing confidence and self-assurance. Ignoring Mailer’s advice, McInerney’s novel The Good Life was published in 2006 where it joined such fictional treatments of the events as Fredric Beigbeder’s Windows on the World (2004), Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005), Ken Kalfus’ A Disorder Peculiar to the Country (2005), Patrick McGrath’s Ghost Town (2005) and Claire Messud’s The Emperor’s Children (2006)."