9/11 Gothic

Decrypting Ghosts and Trauma in New York City’s Terrorism Novels

Danel Olson

• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781978789319
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Gothic, Romance, & Horror Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Published to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks, 9/11 Gothic: Decrypting Ghosts and Trauma in New York City's Terrorism Novels returns to the ruins and anguish of 9/11 to pose a question not yet addressed by scholarship. Two time World Fantasy Award-winning writer Danel Olson asks how, why, and where New York City novels capture the terror of the Al-Qaeda mass murders through a supernatural lens. This book explores ghostly presences from the world's largest crime scene in novels by Don DeLillo, Jonathan Safran Foer, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Griffin Hansbury, and Patrick McGrath—all of whom have been called writers of Gotham. Arguing how theories on trauma and the Gothic can combine to explain ghostly encounters civilian survivors experience in fiction, Olson shares what those eerie meetings express about grief, guilt, love, memory, sex, and suicidal urges. This book also explores why and how paths to recovery open for these ghost-visited survivors in the fiction of catastrophe from the early twenty-first century.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Connecting Trauma Theory, 9/11 Novels, Gothic Traditions, and the Unidentified Bones of the World Trade Center
• Chapter 1: Don DeLillo’s Falling Man (2007): Deserting and Impersonating the Dead
• Chapter 2: Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005): Searching and Disinterring the Dead
• Chapter 3: Lynne Sharon Schwartz’s The Writing on the Wall (2005): Avenging and Resurrecting the Dead
• Chapter 4: Griffin Hansbury’s The Nostalgist (2012): Conjuring and Romancing the Dead
• Chapter 5: Patrick McGrath’s Ground Zero (2005): Abandoning and Angering the Dead
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1: Further Reading
• Appendix 2: Interview at the Opening of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, New York City, with Its Executive Vice P esident and Director Alice M. Greenwald (June 16, 2014)
• Bibliography
• Index
• About the Author