parents' experiences as concentration camp survivors. lle expanded this premise into a full- blown graphic novel. which he drew from l‘)S() to l‘LS’b. In it he presented .lews as mice and the (ierman oppressors as cats (the Kat/,ies). That book and its sequel won Spiegelman a l’ulit/er Him in l‘)‘)2. And then he did what any right thinking leftist conspiracy theory head would do: he sat on his arse for a decade. smoked cigarettes. lived off his nominal fame by doing sketch work for the New )br/u'r and basically tried to not write another graphic novel. Needless to say. it took an event of local and global import to shake the man from his sloth. as he explains in his new graphic noycl III the Slim/(mix (if Nu TUN‘VI'S. ‘The September || attacks taught me some lessons. ()ne. cigarettes may not he the thing that kills me. Two. I understand why the Jews didn‘t leave (iermany after the Kristallnacht. And three. I was wasting my time doing anything besides writing comics.‘ Spiegelman‘s new book is something very special and though we should never celebrate what happened that day in September. its effect as a catalyst on this remarkable writer.
artist and thinker is undeniable. In the Shadows of
No 'lon't'rs is Spiegelman‘s diary of madness. a journal of a trauma escapee in which he uses true and made up -- events that happened to him on
the day in question (one of the true stories was of
‘the harrowing diye through a panicked city to retrieve our nine-year—old son. Dash from the United Nations School that we thought was a likely target that morning‘ ). Spiegelman also uses the account to argue that although the Jihad kamikaze bombers were the hijackers on that particular day. there has been plenty of hijacking of the symbol of the twin towers (by the media. warmongers. fundamentalist Christians. and anyone from Texas) since the event.
Two years ago such a book would not have
been possible and indeed the first serialisations of
this mighty work were practically ignored (the book was published in instalments in Die left and various other publications in Germany. while in the US. only the linglish language vestige of the once proud Yiddish broadsheet I‘m-ward would touch it). But times change and what Spiegelman describes as ‘The New .\'ormal‘ changed: the realisation that those people who flew. floated. glittered and faded on that day for little more than increased security at airports and a sudden uplift
‘I
gnu”! a"
rm *
in the [S flag and weapon making industries may have had to sink into the public‘s consciousness eventually.
The cloud is so thick it’s impossible to tell smoke from dust. The tower that was struck after ours collapsed first. Not trying to figure out but figuring out all the same: that
means our tower will implode in a few minutes.’ From Windows on the World by Frederic Beigbeder.
WE SHOULD NEVER CELEBRATE WHAT HAPPENED THAT ONE DAY IN SEPTEMBER
How does the song go'.’ ‘The creed and the colour and the name don’t matter/ Were you there'." Like the people who probably really wrote the (iospels. l‘rederic Beigbeder wasn't there. A 40-year—old lirench novelist. publisher. literary critic and broadcaster with a penchant for cross referencing Derrida and (iramsci with the most basic of cultural signposts (too much Barthes in the bath tub. no doubt). Beigbeder is that most rare of things: an entertaining and deeply gifted cultural facto-fictionalist. His new book Him/outs (Hi the World reimagines the events that took place in the restaurant on the l()7th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade (‘entre on I lth September 2()()l. Beigbeder does not pretend for a moment that he knows the truth of the horror any better than anyone else. yet there is something so compelling about his evocation of a father and his children's tale in those last few hours. Beigbeder does not miss the contentiousness of the fact that a l‘renchman is taking these events as a basis for what is basically a discussion of \‘ictlmhood. fate. empathy and the value of intellectualism in the face of the unexpected and uncertain. But time will possibly prove Beigbeder‘s account of the Twin Towers tragedy as the one that sticks. It‘s a chronicle of the ridiculous by the ridiculed ~ the ever unpopular literary critic and deconstructivist. But ultimately. these two books can only ever be stepping stones to a better place — a place away from the tragedy. patriotic hysteria and governmental hoodwinking that followed llth September 200]. As the slightly reactionary L'S communalist Elbert Hubbard (editor of I’m and Plif/f.\‘1fii(’ magazines 18564915) once wrote: 'A retentive memory may be a good thing but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness.’
In the Shadows of No Towers by Art Spiegelman is out now (Penguin), as is Windows of the World (Fourth Estate).
9—23 Set; 200-4 THE LIST 19