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6.
AOTW: There are many books coming out about 9/11, in addition to those already in print. Have you read any? Will you read any?
William Carman: I have not read any yet. I'm still thinking about whether I will read any or not.
Lori Woolridge: I haven't read any and I do not plan to read any. It's too hard to relive because it's still too personal and my heart is still too bruised. For the first time I truly understand the cliche, "heavy heart."
Philip Jolowicz: When I visited New York in October 2001, I bought a book of photographs of the events published to raise money for victims. In truth I haven't opened it yet; I'm not quite sure why. The only other paperwork I purchased --- for $10 from a cheerful and vociferous Jewish teenager in Times Square --- was a roll of toilet paper with the face of Osama bin Laden printed on each sheet. I read the newspapers and The Economist and the like, but do not think I shall read full blown analytical works on the subject until more time has been put between us and the events.
Earl Merkel: What I've seen in bookstores has been exclusively nonfiction. Some of it is good, some less so; a few exist merely to capitalize on the reading public's need to understand, or at least assimilate, the horrific event itself. That's not necessarily bad, but it seldom makes for shelf-life longevity and certainly not for literary immortality.
I worked as a journalist for a decade and a half; in journalism, fast is good --- but both history and literature are probably best written from a perspective more distanced than where we currently are.
The definitive books on 9/11 remain to be written, and not all of them will be nonfiction. Novelists will be parsing the events of 9/11 through any number of characters over the foreseeable future; whatever truths they discover, or create, will form a significant part of how all of us --- and our children, and children's children --- incorporate the tragedy.
I've read several of the books currently out, and I'll probably read more --- but as research, because I know that what happened on 9/11 will be at least a factor in the fiction I write from now on. And that's true, I think, for all writers alive today.
Bruce Feiler: I have benefited greatly from a number of books that may not have been inspired by 9/11 but that achieved new resonance, like Bernard Lewis's What Went Wrong as well as a few of his historical books like The Jews of Islam. Michael Oren's extraordinary Six Days of War, about the Six Day War of 1967, also throbs a bit more powerfully in today's climate.
Jim Fusilli: I haven't read any, but I probably will. It's too early for me to think about contextualizing the events, so I'll be looking for hard news and spot commentary rather than any macro-analyses. Some major newspapers are compiling their running coverage of the day's events, and I'll read those. I want to reread William Langewiesche's work that originally appeared in The Atlantic Monthly. I understand the students of Stuyvesant High School, which is right by the World Trade Center, have compiled their experiences. I'll read that, I'm sure.
Jennifer Blake: I haven't read any, no. Maybe it's writer empathy, maybe normal human reaction, maybe being forced to come to grips early on via my work, but the whole thing is still too painful to revisit. I'm sure I will read about it eventually, but only after more time and distance.
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