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Title: 110 Stories: New York Writes After September 11 by Ulrich Baer ISBN: 0-8147-9905-1 Publisher: New York University Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.38 (13 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: 110 different perspectives
Comment: As a reader from Berlin, Germany, I find "110 stories" an interesting approach to understanding what the events of 9/11 meant to the people of New York. Having read many articles by correspondents, journalists, political analysts, who have mostly flown into the city to cover the story, hearing the voices of people who talk about their own lives in their home city offers an insight I did not have before.
I am surprised that one reader from New York finds it disturbing to find so many different views in the collection; some of the criticism expressed in his review point to things which make the book special and valuable to me:
For instance, pieces which were written before Sept 11, and are included in "110 stories", are a very important part of remembering. How can we remember what we have lost if we forget what it was like before? Who would not remember his or her visits to the "Windows of the World", or the photograph of the towers one took on a first visit to New York, when trying to understand what happened on 9/11?
And, writers, or poets, do not have to limit their work to what might be suitable for a newspaper report. What they write in order to express what they see, hear, and feel, thinking about the tragedy of the twin towers, has to be different from what I expect to hear on "60 minutes" or read in "Newsweek".
The good thing about "110 stories" is that it features such a wide range of views, of literary techniques, of backgrounds and opinions. Nobody will agree with, or love, every single of the pieces included in the collection, as nobody will grasp the whole meaning of what happened one year ago in New York.
New York, to a reader from Europe, is an international, a multi-faceted city, with millions of different people and ideas and views. I expect from a book entitled "New York writes after Sept 11" precisely the diversity of form and perspective that the book delivers.
Rating: 5
Summary: Towering Tribute to the Power of Literature
Comment: The attack on the World Trade Center was a global event; its long-time effects will be felt across the world. Yet the reaction in New York City has remained deeply personal, and the losses there concern the details of the everyday for the millions of individuals that make New York into such a vibrant, exciting place. Other books have chronicled the rescue efforts, or recreate the ominous day last September via professional and amateur photographs and reporters' notes. With 110 Stories, editor Baer has tapped into New York as that most unusual of places: a city filled with uniquely talented writers: playwrights, authors, poets, screenwriters, wordsmiths, novelists. The power of storytelling is here marshaled to confront and work through overwhelming trauma, and the city's writers (including some big names like Paul Auster, Peter Carey, John Guare, Richard Howard, Darren Aronofsky) have pulled together to create a book-length memorial. I personally loved April Reynolds's mesmerizing, swaying piece on another American disaster (the Mississippi flood in the 1910s), and Lydia Davis's moving and subtle piece on how to refer to her dad when he was (or is?) dying. These writers use fiction to probe issues such as life and death, and to find out whether we should think about these issues now, in this new age, in a different way. At the same time, the book is life-affirming without ever becoming bullying or heavy-handed. It celebrates the immense diversity of America- ranging from a former Mujahedeen reflecting on his losses post-9/11 to a retired US Marine now writing adventure novels, who before 9/11 had a novel all mapped out with the World Trade Center blown up by a nuclear bomb. By including pieces worth reading even apart from the terrible event to which they sometimes obliquely refer, the book as a whole testifies to what has come under attack over the last year. If you like great and intelligent writing, and if you can deal with what's unexpected and provocative, you should pick up this book. If you want to know what literature can do in the face of unspeakable grief, this book is also for you.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Diverse and Eloquent "Chorus"
Comment: The use of the word "stories" in the title refers to a variety and abundance of writing by different New York authors of literary fiction, poetry, and dramatic prose. They share their reactions to and perspectives on the tragic events of September 11. All of the selections have been brilliantly edited by Ulrich Baer. In his eloquent Introduction, he quotes Don DeLillo's suggestion that the task at hand was "to give memory, tenderness and meaning to all that howling space" caused by the towers' collapse. These are indeed what Baer characterizes as "110 passages through silence to the first stirrings of a story, to the instant when event becomes tale, when loss gives rise to words." He adds that New York "lives and feeds on its stories, creates tall tales, half-lies and mythologies about itself on which its future depends." The 110 "gripping stories" offer what he terms an "accidental juxtaposition" of adjacent but otherwise unrelated human lives.
I presume to suggest that the book be read as an extended narrative, experienced as one would during a series of brief but lively conversations with strangers along a street in Manhattan. (Yes, yes, I know. Getting even one stranger in that bustling borough to converse is never easy. For present purposes, pretend otherwise.) Some works are more personal than others. Some are more directly responsive to the specific events than are others. Collectively, however, they serve as the literary equivalent of a CAT scan applied to the heart, mind, and soul of a battered but uniquely resilient and and articulate urban culture.
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Title: Before & After: Stories from New York by Thomas Beller ISBN: 0393323536 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: 01 February, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: September 11, 2001: American Writers Respond by William Heyen, Joy Harjo, Joanna Scott, John Updike, Denis Johnson ISBN: 0971822808 Publisher: Etruscan Press Pub. Date: September, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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Title: American Ground: Unbuilding the World Trade Center by William Langewiesche ISBN: 0865476756 Publisher: North Point Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha ISBN: 0520231120 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 2001 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson ISBN: 0679744479 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 February, 1994 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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