Kristiaan Versluys

Out of the blue : September 11 and the novel

AcknowledgmentsIntroduction. 9/11: The Discursive Responses1. American Melancholia: Don DeLillos Falling Man2. Art Spiegelmans In the Shadow of No Towers: The Politics of Trauma3. A Rose Is Not a Rose Is Not a Rose: History and Language in Jonathan Safran Foers Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close 4. Exorcising the Ghost: Irony and Spectralization in Fr d ric Beigbeders Windows on the World5. September 11 and the OtherEpilogueNotesWorks CitedIndex

Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers: 9-11 and the Representation of Trauma

This paper demonstrates how in his graphic novel In the Shadow of No Towers Art Spiegelman reads the events of 9/11 through the conceptual screen of the Holocaust. The questions that are raised in this connection concern the legitimacy of speaking about catastrophes, the stylistic means necessary to avoid sensationalism and kitsch, and finally the role of political commitment in the process of mourning or working-through.

9/11 as a European Event: the Novels

At the time of writing, more than 20 novels have been written that deal directly or indirectly with the events of 9/11. In broad outlines, they fall under four categories: the novel of recuperation, the novel of first-hand witnessing, the great New York novel, and the novel of the outsider. It is the last category of novels – written by non-Americans – that demonstrates the extent to which 11 September has penetrated deep into the European psyche and thus has become a European event. What is surprising is that the gap between the continents seems smaller in fiction than in politics. Even Luc Langs onze septembre mon amour, a strident anti-American screed, is characterized by a sense of solidarity for the victims and for an alternative America, antithetical to the official one. In FrA©dA©ric Beigbeders Windows on the World (a French novel with an English title), Europe and the US remain united in the overarching concept of the West, sharing a common destiny. In Ian McEwans Saturday, finally, the events in the US have become part and parcel of the protagonists existence, even though he lives thousands of miles away in the posh part of London.

The City in Literature. A Review Article on Recent Studies

The City in Literature. An Intellectual and Cultural History. By RICHARD LEHAN. Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1998. xvi+330pp. City Codes. Reading the Modern Urban Novel. By HANAH WIRTH-NESHER. Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 1996. x+244pp. New York Fictions: Modernity, Postmodernism, The New Moderns. By PETER BROOKER. London and New York: Longman. 1996. ix+245pp. Urban Verbs. Arts and Discourses of American Cities. By KEVIN R. MCNAMARA. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 1996. vii+310pp. October Cities. The Redevelopment of Urban Literature. By CARLO ROTELLA. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1998. xii+358pp.

9/11 in the Novel

In an article entitled “Art and Atrocity in a Post-9/11 World” the Jewish-American author Thane Rosenbaum asks himself: “Is there a proper role for the artist, and specifically the novelist, at this time in our nation’s history? Can we make art in a time of atrocity? Does the imagination have anything to say when it has to compete with the actual horror of collapsing skyscrapers […]?” He himself has a categorical answer to these questions. “As a novelist,” he writes, “I wouldn’t touch the World Trade Center, and the looming tragedy around it, as a centerpiece for a new book […]. I’m not ready to write, or talk, about it yet.” According to him, in the aftermath of September 11, “[s]ilence might be the loudest sound of all.”1

In memoriam Rene Derolez

Former chief editor of English Studies and emeritus Professor René Derolez passed away on the 24 March 2005 in Bruges, at the age of eighty-four. He retired from Ghent University (Belgium) on the 1 October 1986, following his many years as head of the Department of English and Old Germanic Linguistics. René Derolez studied Germanic philology at Ghent University (then the State University of Ghent), where he was awarded a licentiate in 1943. He went on to do a Master of Arts at Harvard (Cambridge, Massachusetts) in 1947. While at Harvard he carried out research on Runes and other (related) areas of study. He then obtained a doctorate and soon afterwards a special doctorate, the equivalent of a ‘‘Habilitation,’’ at Ghent University. In 1959 he was granted a professorship in English and Old Germanic Linguistics and was also appointed head of the department. Derolez’s work as a scholar was highly valued both at home and abroad. Proof of this recognition was his appointment to the prestigious Francqui chair at the University of Liège (1975) and the many posts he held in academic associations and foundations in Belgium and abroad. He was, among other things, associate editor of Anglo-Saxon England and of the Journal of Indo-European Studies, Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy, a member of numerous linguistics societies and president of the International Conference on Anglo-Saxon Glossography (1986). He was also a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for the Sciences and Fine Arts. Derolez was assistant editor of English Studies between 1963 and 1969, and again between 1980 and 1998. From 1970 to 1979 he was chief editor. He took over from the renowned Dutch grammarian and founder of the journal, R. W. Zandvoort. Under Derolez’s inspired editorship, English Studies maintained its position as leading continental European journal in the fields of English language and literature. He contributed many book reviews and ‘‘Brief Mentions’’ himself. At the time he stepped down as chief editor, the assistant editors praised the ‘‘width of his interests’’ and remarked ‘‘how widely read and well-informed in many literary periods’’ he was. In the field of research, Derolez will be remembered for years to come as a specialist in Runic Studies, Old Germanic Culture and Old English philology. His Runica Manuscripta (1954) was groundbreaking and his book De godsdienst der Germanen (1959) was translated into French and German. In 1965 he published Les Celtes et les Germains together with A. Varagnac, next to writing numerous articles in the field of Old Germanic Studies. Yet Derolez’s research interests did not limit themselves to Old Germanic Studies alone. He maintained a keen interest in all aspects of English linguistics, which is English Studies Vol. 87, No. 1, February 2006, 1 – 2