Paul Auster
The insistent realism of
Don DeLillo’s ‘Falling Man’ and Paul Auster’s ‘Man in the Dark’ by Ugo
Panzani
During the last decade, many theorists and writers have remarked the peculiar fictionalisation of the facts of 9/11. For instance, as Salman Rushdie explains, “we all crossed a frontier that day, an invisible boundary between the imaginable and the unimaginable, and it turned out to be the unimaginable that was real” (Rushdie 2002:
436-437). Martin Amis pointed out that September 11 “marked the apotheosis of the postmodern era – the era of images and perception” (Amis 2001: G2). Similarly, in relation to the September 11 attacks, Slavoj Žižek argued that “in contrast to the
Barthesian effet du réel, in which the text makes us accept its fictional product as ‘real’, here, the Real itself, in order to be sustained, has to be perceived as a nightmarish unreal spectre” (Žižek 2002: 19). The Western perception of reality was abruptly disturbed by the fall of one of the symbols of late capitalism operated by terrorist attacks that looked as if they appeared from another, external and exotic, dimension.
As Žižek states,
We should therefore invert the standard reading according to which the WTC explosions were the intrusion of the Real which shattered our illusory sphere: quite the reverse - it was before the WTC collapse that we lived in our reality, perceiving Third World horrors as something which was not actually part of our social reality, as something which existed (for us) as a spectral apparition on the
(TV) screen - and what happened on September 11 was that this fantasmatic
Saggi/Ensayos/Essais/Essays
9/11/2011 – 11/2011
76
screen apparition entered our reality. It is not that reality entered our image: the image entered and shattered our reality (i.e. the symbolic coordinates which determine what we experience as reality) (Ibid.: 16).
On the literary side, many U.S. novelists such as Jonathan Safran Foer (Extremely
Don DeLillo’s ‘Falling Man’ and Paul Auster’s ‘Man in the Dark’ by Ugo
Panzani
During the last decade, many theorists and writers have remarked the peculiar fictionalisation of the facts of 9/11. For instance, as Salman Rushdie explains, “we all crossed a frontier that day, an invisible boundary between the imaginable and the unimaginable, and it turned out to be the unimaginable that was real” (Rushdie 2002:
436-437). Martin Amis pointed out that September 11 “marked the apotheosis of the postmodern era – the era of images and perception” (Amis 2001: G2). Similarly, in relation to the September 11 attacks, Slavoj Žižek argued that “in contrast to the
Barthesian effet du réel, in which the text makes us accept its fictional product as ‘real’, here, the Real itself, in order to be sustained, has to be perceived as a nightmarish unreal spectre” (Žižek 2002: 19). The Western perception of reality was abruptly disturbed by the fall of one of the symbols of late capitalism operated by terrorist attacks that looked as if they appeared from another, external and exotic, dimension.
As Žižek states,
We should therefore invert the standard reading according to which the WTC explosions were the intrusion of the Real which shattered our illusory sphere: quite the reverse - it was before the WTC collapse that we lived in our reality, perceiving Third World horrors as something which was not actually part of our social reality, as something which existed (for us) as a spectral apparition on the
(TV) screen - and what happened on September 11 was that this fantasmatic
Saggi/Ensayos/Essais/Essays
9/11/2011 – 11/2011
76
screen apparition entered our reality. It is not that reality entered our image: the image entered and shattered our reality (i.e. the symbolic coordinates which determine what we experience as reality) (Ibid.: 16).
On the literary side, many U.S. novelists such as Jonathan Safran Foer (Extremely
Cited: Amend C. and G. Diez, 2008, “I Don’t Know America Anymore”, Interview with Don 2008, (March 22, 2011). Amis M., 2001, “Fear and Loathing”, The Guardian, 18 Sept. 2001, G2. Auster P., 2007, Man in The Dark, Henry Holt and Company, New York. Baudrillard J., 2002, The Spirit of Terrorism and Requiem for the Twin Towers, trans Bertens H., 1995, The Idea of the Postmodern. A History, Routledge, London-New York. Brauner D., 2008/2009, “‘The Days After’ and ‘the Ordinary Run of Hours’. Brendan M., 2008, Paul Auster 's Postmodernity, Routledge, London-New York. Conte J. M., 2008, “Conclusion: Writing amid the ruins: 9/11 and Cosmopolis,” in Duvall J Cvek S., 2009, “Killing Politics: The Art of Recovery in Falling Man”, Studia Romanica et Anglica Zagrabensia, Vol 07, 1997, (April 10, 2011); “In the Ruins of the Future (April 10, 2011); 2007, Falling Man, Scribner, New York. Dirda M., 2008, “Spellbound”, The New York Review of Books, December 4, 2008, (March 3, Evans D. H. 2006, “Taking Out the Trash. Don DeLillo’s Underworld, Liquid Modernity, and the End of Garbage”, The Cambridge Quarterly, 35.2, pp Gleason P., 2002, “Don DeLillo, T.S. Eliot, and the Redemption of America’s Atomic Waste Land”, in Dewey - Kellman - Malin (eds.), Underwords Gray R., 2009, “Open Doors, Closed Minds. American Prose Writing at a Time of Crisis”, American Literary History, 21.1., pp Hassan I., 2003, “Beyond Postmodernism. Toward an Aesthetic of Trust”, in K. Houen A., 2004, “Novel Spaces and Taking Place(s) in the Wake of September 11”, Studies Hughes, W., 2004, “What Happened to Nick Berg? Father of Nick Berg Blasts Bush-Cheney Administration”, The Baltimore Chronicle, June 7, 2004, < http://baltimorechronicle.com/060804Hughes.shtml> (March 29, 2011). McGlone J., 2008, “A voice in the darkness - Paul Auster interview”, The Scotsman, 30 August 2008, (April 12, 2011). Morley C., 2008, “Plotting against America: 9/11 and the spectacle of terror in contemporary American fiction”, Gramma/Γράμμα: Journal of Theory and Criticism, 16, Morley C., 2008/2009, “The End of Innocence: Tales of Terror after 9/11”, Review of International American Studies, Special Issue Osteen, M., 2000, American Magic and Dread. Don DeLillo’s Dialog with Culture, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. Rothberg M, 2009, “A Failure of the Imagination: Diagnosing the Post-9/11 Novel: A Response to Richard Gray”, American Literary History, 21.1, pp Rushdie S., 2002, Step Across This Line. Collected Nonfiction 1992-2002, Random House, New York. 89 Simonetti P., 2011, “Loss, Ruins, War: Paul Auster’s Response to 9/11 and the ‘War Skinner Q., 2002, “A Third Concept of Liberty”, London Review of Books, 24.7, (February 18, 2011). Varvogli A., 2008/2009, “Ailing Authors: Paul Auster’s Travels in the Scriptorium and Philip Roth’s Exit Ghost”, Review of International American Studies, Special Issue. Žižek S., 2002, Welcome to the Desert of the Real! Five Essays on September 11 and Related Dates, Verso, London-New York.