Journal
of American Studies of Turkey
14 (2001) : 51-60
When
Disaster Strikes at Home:
September
11 and Its Aftermath in The New Yorker*
When the World Trade Center in New York and the
Pentagon in Washington, D.C. were attacked on September 11, 2001, television
covered the unfolding events live. For the first time, a momentous historical
event involving the tragic deaths of thousands of people was broadcast in real
time, with all the uncertainty as to what the next moment would bring. The
Americans had watched the start of the Gulf War of 1991 live as well, but the
coverage was monitored by the U.S. military to such an extent that the war
appeared to have “no blood, no killing, no dead, no wounded” (Weimann 307). For
most Americans, the Gulf War was a “remote conflict” (Weimann 313). As
September 11 took place on home ground, shock waves swept through the entire
nation, particularly through New York, where the attacks led to the collapse of
the Twin Towers in Manhattan. Watching the tragedy on television or witnessing
it with their own eyes, New Yorkers initially did not know how to respond
(Spiegelman “Re: Cover. How It Came to Be”; Updike 28).
If live television inevitably exacerbated the sense of shock
and helplessness many New Yorkers experienced on September 11, the press was
quick to contribute to the process of recovery, attempting to place the events
in a clearer perspective for New Yorkers. The New York Times, for
example, besides reporting on the events in its September 12, 2001 issue, also
argued that New Yorkers had already rallied together after the attacks (Purnick
A6). Three weeks after the attacks, an article in The New Yorker magazine made the following
comment: “We saw an enormous amount of grief, but little panic; anger, but very
little hysteria.” (Denby 120). These comments on the attitude of New Yorkers
towards the disaster exemplify the tendency of journalism to interpret the news
while reporting it. As Robert Karl Manoff explains, “No story is the inevitable
product of the event it reports; no event dictates its own narrative form. News
occurs at the conjunction of events and texts, and while events create the
story, the story also creates the event” (228).
The New Yorker’s
coverage of September 11 and its aftermath provides a noteworthy example of how
the press ‘creates’ an event, or to be more precise, how it aims to forge
consensual ways of thinking and acting for a widely heterogeneous group of
people faced with disaster. Although The
New Yorker does not directly express such an aim, many of its articles
after September 11 point to an unstated mission to be helpful to New Yorkers at
this critical point in the city’s history. Writing in the November 12, 2001
issue, Roger Angell tells of how the magazine undertook a similar mission during
the Second World War: “When this country found itself at war in December, 1941,
The New Yorker wanted to be useful
but didn’t always know how” (90). Accordingly, the magazine blundered at times,
as when it published a “xenophobic” cartoon showing two “swastika-robed”
Japanese men (90). And yet, Angell argues, The
New Yorker on the whole knew how to respond to war: for example, it had an
“overseas edition” which “became an instant hit, because it contained so many
cartoons, along with that vivid war reporting” (95). Explaining that The New Yorker’s circulation increased
twofold during the war, Angell attributes this success to the magazine’s
“civilian” spirit which allowed for some respite from the war not only through
cartoons, but also through “fiction and poems and spot drawings” as well as
“theater reviews and the racetrack column and the books section” (95). Although
he makes no direct reference to September 11, Angell suggests that The New Yorker, having rendered commendable
journalistic services in the past with its ‘civilian’ spirit, has enough
experience to achieve the same in the present.
The New
Yorker’s extensive coverage of September 11 and its
aftermath explores the political, legal, military, and cultural implications of
the attacks, both on the national and international fronts. This paper analyses
those articles that deal particularly with New York and New Yorkers, and seeks
to explain the ways in which The New
Yorker attempts to foster a civic spirit that entails, in the words of one New Yorker writer, “people pulling
together for the common good” (Gopnik, “Urban Renewal” 68). The paper surveys
those issues of the magazine from September 24, 2001 to May 20, 2002, a period
of about eight months following the attacks.
The New Yorker
A New-York based weekly magazine running since 1925, The New Yorker has a high profile in the
American press, due to its "famous covers and cartoons" as well as
its "in-depth articles" and "impressive array of authors"
(“The New Yorker”). In May 2003, the magazine received two awards for
“reporting and fiction” (Carr C6) at the National Magazine Awards, thus
maintaining its clear lead over other competitors, such as the Atlantic
Monthly (Kuczynski C6). The New
Yorker’s status as “An American Icon” (Yagoda B6) seems to be such that
even its staunchest critics need to acknowledge it. When Tina Brown (the editor
from 1992 to 1998) introduced a series of controversial innovations, an article
in the quarterly Dissent complained about the magazine's new and “tiresome penchant
for gossip about the rich and famous,” but qualified its criticism by arguing
that “The New Yorker is still a place
to turn to for both serious and quirky journalism of a sort that would not
appear anywhere else” (Conant 129-130). More recently, the Nation, a
“liberal and left-wing publication” (“The Nation”), has blamed The New Yorker for becoming the
mouthpiece of the Bush administration regarding the Iraq war which started in
March 2003 (Lazare). Yet again, the article makes it clear that The New Yorker is too influential to be
lightly dismissed:
The New Yorker may be just one example of a magazine that
has lost its bearings, but, given its journalistic track record, its massive
circulation (nearly a million) and the remarkable hold it still has on a major
chunk of the reading public, it's an unusually important one (Lazare 30).
The New Yorker's
coverage of September 11 and its immediate aftermath has also drawn attention
from the press, which has been generally favorable. The article in the Nation
mentioned above, for example, states that The New Yorker, in its early coverage of September 11, approached
the policies of the Bush administration with caution (Lazare 25). The December
10, 2001 cover of The New Yorker, a
map of New York entitled "New Yorkistan" by Maira Kalman and Rick
Meyerowitz, is praised by the New York Times for its humor: with the
"names of the city's neighborhood Afghanisticized," the cover enabled
New Yorkers to see their city as "resistant as ever. Seventh Avenue is
still in Schmattahadeen (the rag district), and La Guardia Airport is still
Taxistan" (Boxer A13). This article demonstrates that even the New York Times, a newspaper of “national
prestige and influence” (Baughman 131), takes notice of the coverage of The New Yorker.
The New Yorker
and September 11
The New Yorker
started its coverage of the attacks and their aftermath in the September 24,
2001 issue, which features several articles on the events of the day, including
eyewitness and survivor accounts. Mostly by or about New Yorkers, these
accounts show many responding in similar ways to the unfolding disaster.
Disbelief at what is happening and concern for relatives and friends who may be
in immediate danger emerge as the most prominent initial responses. The
novelist John Updike, for example, watching the attack on the Twin Towers with
his wife, felt as if “this was not quite real; it could be fixed; the
technocracy the towers symbolized would find a way to put out the fire and
reverse the damage” (28). The New Yorker
artist Art Spiegelman, like Updike, was with his wife at the time: “The scale
of the disaster was at first unclear—as many have since observed, it seemed
‘surreal’—and we had to get over our stunned disconnect to realize that this
was no movie, and that our fourteen-year-old daughter, Nadja, was in the heart
of the growing pandaemonium” (“Re: Cover. How It Came to Be”).
Spiegelman’s momentary association of the September 11 attacks
with movies points to a tendency in American public culture, evident at least
since the Gulf War of 1991, to describe a real event with reference to
Hollywood films. As Gabriel Weimann explains, the media coverage of the Gulf
War was largely responsible for the emergence of this phenomenon. Following an
earlier study by George Gerbner, Weimann states that the “Gulf War was
presented in the media with a rich variety of metaphors and images. In fact,
they were so appealing, so well tailored to television and film genres, that
they replaced the war as war” (301). Even political authorities were drawn to
movie talk in explaining their perceptions of the war. Dick Cheney, the U.S.
Secretary of Defense at the time, commented later that the Gulf War “appeared
to us—especially during the air campaign—as Top Gun and Star Wars”
(qtd in Weimann 297).
September 11 also came to be discussed in terms of movies, much
to the dismay of The New Yorker
artists and writers. One Jack Ziegler cartoon, carrying the ironic caption
“[w]ith every passing day, our grasp of the issues deepens,” shows a
street-scene where the passers-by make comments such as “[w]asn’t there a
Northern Alliance in the first ‘Star Wars’ movie?” (Ziegler 96). In the article
“This Is Not a Movie,” Anthony Lane shows the astonishing similarities between
the script of Edward Zwick's 1998 film The Siege and the comments of
political leaders, journalists, as well as people on the street in the
immediate aftermath of September 11. He argues that Americans, having never
encountered such devastation on home ground before, have resorted to the language
and imagery of action movies as the most readily available means to describe
September 11 (79). Lane's argument suggests that Americans should develop an
alternative language to describe and to come to terms with the disaster.
Several New Yorker
writers turn to literature in their search for such a language. Alex Ross
quotes Wallace Stevens, who believed that in times of catastrophic events,
poets could make life bearable by engendering “a violence from within that
protects us from a violence without” (qtd. in Ross 80). According to Ross,
Stevens's words capture the tempestuous spirit of a recent performance of
Brahms's German Requiem by the New
York Philharmonic, a spirit which in its turn reflected the emotions of the New Yorkers after September 11 (80).
Similarly, in paying tribute to the rescue workers who lost
their lives at the World Trade Center, David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, refers to Walt Whitman
and quotes the following lines from “Song of Myself,” first published in 1855
in Leaves of Grass:
I am the mash'd
fireman with breast-bone broken,
Tumbling walls
buried me in their debris,
Heat and smoke I
inspired, I heard the yelling shouts of my comrades,
I heard the
distant click of their picks and shovels,
They have clear'd the beams away, they tenderly lift me forth (Remnick 53).
Besides
their relevance to the plight of the firefighters who joined the rescue effort
on September 11, these lines also pre-scribe a very specific way of responding
to the disaster through their emphasis on fellowship. The suffering of the
dying fireman is alleviated by his ‘comrades,’ who reach him against all odds
and remove him ‘tenderly’ from under the rubble. Moreover, his suffering is
voiced by the persona who empathizes with him (‘I am the mash’d fireman’). A
few years after writing this poem, Whitman assumed the role of the persona of
these lines in real life, when he voluntarily served in military hospitals in
Washington during the Civil War: one duty he undertook for himself was to write
letters to the families of the soldiers on their behalf. When he had to
communicate sad news, Whitman would do his best to put “humanly devastating
suffering in a redeeming context, emphasizing the transfiguring courage of the
sufferer, the love and care that attended him” (Thomas 33). By quoting Whitman,
David Remnick implicitly urges the New Yorkers to follow the path of the poet
who “remains the singular, articulated soul of this city” (Remnick 53).
If literature has provided The
New Yorker writers with a good means to express their thoughts about
September 11, theatrical performances seem to have assumed a similar function
for the public at large. Several articles in The New Yorker report events where the performers sang patriotic
songs in a communal expression of solidarity. At a benefit organized by the
Metropolitan Opera, the performers, joined by then mayor Rudolph Giuliani, sang
the “Star-Spangled Banner” (Ross 80). The City Opera followed suit, with
performers singing similar songs at the start of a performance (Ross 80).
Similar scenes took place in Broadway theatres where, according to the critic
Nancy Franklin, “audiences and performers felt the need to make it overtly
clear that they appreciated each other's presence” (118). In one show, notes
Franklin, a joyful song occasioned “a moment that didn't erase the sorrow but
celebrated our gift for shouldering it collectively” (118). New York's opera
houses, concert halls, and theaters were not the only venues where the public
sentiment found expression: a few days after September 11, Alex Ross explains,
during a vigil in Union Square in the East Village, people sang songs such as
“America the Beautiful” (78).
The civic solidarity of New Yorkers, then, has found a
legitimate form of expression particularly on occasions and in places which
allow people to come together. The New
Yorker articles also give clues as to the nature of this solidarity,
composed of several elements. First, it is characterized by emotional restraint
and defiance at the face of disaster. David Remnick, while talking about Walt
Whitman, defines the poet's “legacy” as “a civic and national spirit of
resolve, improvisation, and kindness when panic and meanness might also have
been expected” (53).
Second, several New
Yorker writers find increasing cooperation between the races after
September 11, which in their view points to the solidarity of New Yorkers. The
writer Ben Younger heard a good-humored African-American security officer at
Ground Zero saying “I never thought I'd be searching your car” to a white
police officer (56). In his first TV show after the attacks, the talk show host
Jon Stewart said that Martin Luther King’s “dream” was “realized” at Ground
Zero:
We are judging people not by the color of
their skin but the content of their character… To see these firefighters, these
guys from all over the country, literally with buckets rebuilding, that, that
is, that’s extraordinary—and that’s why we’ve already won (Friend 30).
Third, civic solidarity manifests itself in a willingness to accommodate
(especially Muslim) minorities. In his article “Cleats, Dates, and Goats,” Lee
Smith tells of overhearing Muslim men jocosely talk about the differences of
fasting back at home and in New York. This peaceful scene takes place in
Prospect Park, where “a group of Muslim girls in dark dresses and head scarves
were playing softball” (48). Judith Thurman writes of a “reception featuring
art and poetry by Afghans living in New York” (42). According to The New Yorker, then, at a time when
many Afghan cities like Herat and Kabul lie in ruins (Bellaigue; Anderson), New
York becomes a safe haven for the Muslim minorities.
The New Yorker
reinforces the sense of civic solidarity through one overarching symbol: that
of the Twin Towers. Various articles concentrate on the structural strengths
and weaknesses of the buildings, their architectural relationship to the urban
setting, their symbolic meaning for New York City, and plans to memorialize the
victims on the site of the Towers. Before September 11, the Twin Towers were
subject to more adverse criticism than praise: although they were regarded as
engineering feats, their architectural merit was frequently questioned. Paul
Goldberger argues that they “were gargantuan and banal, blandness blown up to a
gigantic size”; if they had a statement to make, it was one of “power,” owing
to their sheer height (“Building Plans” 76). Adam Gopnik also argues that the
Towers did not have much to offer New Yorkers, other than their size: “The
World Trade Center existed both as a thrilling double exclamation point at the
end of the island and as a rotten place to have to go and get your card
stamped, your registration renewed” (“The City and the Pillars” 38).
After their collapse, however, the meaning of the Twin Towers
significantly changed. According to Goldberger, the World Trade Center has now
“become a noble monument of a lost past” (“Building Plans” 78). And yet, The New Yorker avoids speaking of the
Towers in terms of nihilistic loss. While explaining how he designed the cover
of The New Yorker's September 24
issue, Art Spiegelman tells that the contours of the Twin Towers drawn on a
black background rendered them “ghost images that linger, insisting on their
presence through the blackness” (“Re: Cover: How It Came to Be”). In the same
issue, three page-size photographs of the Towers, showing them at different
times of the day and of the year, accompany the following remarks of the
photographer Joel Meyerowitz: “The towers were by turns hard-edged and
glinting, like the Manhattan schist they stood on, or papery, or brooding and
wet, smothered in tropical cloud banks carried up by the sea. And on other days
they were pewter, or gilded, or incandescent” (48). For Spiegelman and
Meyerowitz, the physical collapse of the Twin Towers has given them an almost
spiritual aura: they now exist in the mind’s eye, all the more indestructible
after their destruction.
Indeed, if it was their structure that made the Towers seem
invulnerable before September 11, after their fall they have paradoxically
become all the more invulnerable through the symbolism associated with them. It
is now impossible to view them from a purely structural or architectural
perspective, for their destiny has become inextricably intertwined with that of
the victims of September 11. As Anthony Lane puts it, “thousands died together,
and therefore something lived” (80). Writing about Frank de Martini, the
“construction manager of the World Trade Center” who died while trying to save
people, Amitav Ghosh demonstrates this point: “The Twin Towers were both a
livelihood and a passion for him: he would speak of them with the absorbed
fascination with which poets sometimes speak of Dante's canzones” (32). The
statement of The New Yorker is clear:
like Frank de Martini, the victims of September 11 should be remembered not in
terms of a violent death, but in terms of a worthwhile life. Similarly,
although they are no longer standing, the Twin Towers have acquired a symbolic
‘presence’ for New Yorkers. The destiny of the victims and that of the Towers
merge.
One temporary project for memorializing the victims was
inspired by this symbolism: a group of architects and artists proposed a
“virtual re-creation, in projected light, of the World Trade Center Towers”
(Tomkins 39). The project was brought to life on March 11, 2002, marking the
sixth month of the attacks, with two shafts of light to illuminate the New York
night sky for one month (Goldberger, “Lights Out” 34). As Paul Goldberger
explains, however, rebuilding the site will be a long and difficult process,
with relatives of the victims regarding the site as "hallowed ground"
on the one hand, and interest groups already pushing to incorporate it once
again into the commercial fabric of Manhattan on the other (“Requiem” 90).
The question of how to rebuild the site seems to be
one major issue likely to threaten the civic solidarity which The New Yorker has fostered since
September 11. The New Yorker writers
generally approach such issues with detached irony. In “Get Your Gas Masks
Here,” Sabina Rubin Erdely explains that after the attacks, there has been a
dramatic increase in the number of the customers of Aramsco, a company that
sells safety equipment. She finishes her article with a dialogue between an
employee and a customer: “One shopper wondered whether the Aramsco employees
kept any protective gear in their own homes. ‘Of course not,’ Scwartz [the employee] said. ‘You can't live your life worrying
over that sort of thing’ ” (60). Nick Paumgarten writes about American Red Cross
donations to those inhabitants of Manhattan who have suffered from the attacks.
The wry undertone at the end of the article suggests Paumgarten's disapproval
of some who have applied for the donations out of simple greed: “ ‘Dude,’ a
lawyer who lives in Tribeca said last week, ‘I hope this story doesn't break
before I get paid.’ He had his money the next day” (58). For The New Yorker writers, at this critical
time when the city most needs calmness and cooperation, neither panic nor
opportunism will do.
In journalism, to quote Robert Karl Manoff once again, “while
events create the story, the story also creates the event” (228). ‘Creating an
event’ is not only a privilege but also a responsibility. The New Yorker’s coverage of September 11 indicates that the
magazine deems itself worthy of exercising this privilege: as discussed above,
Roger Angell’s article, which generally praises The New Yorker’s coverage of the Second World War, hints at The New Yorker’s credentials in
responding to times of crisis. As for responsibility, Angell’s reference to the
cartoon of the two Japanese men (which The
New Yorker published during the Second World War) indirectly conveys The New Yorker’s post-September 11
attitude towards minorities. The New
Yorker might have unwittingly stimulated feelings of hatred towards the
Japanese minority by this cartoon back in the days of the Second War, Angell
seems to say, but it has now learned its lesson. Indeed, The New Yorker’s depiction of the Muslim minorities after September
11, as discussed above, shows them to be living peacefully without any fear of
reprisal in New York, even when it became clear that the attacks were
perpetrated by Islamic extremists.
This image of Muslim
minorities in New York is a telling example of The New Yorker’s attempt to forge solidarity among New Yorkers. In
“Home Is Here,” Mark Singer writes about the problems that the Middle Eastern
minority in Dearborn, Michigan, experienced after September 11: some were
concerned about “the American media’s depiction of Muslims” (68), some received
insulting e-mails (62-63), and one was actually fired the day after the attacks
(70). His boss told the reporters that the attacks “made their religion
[Islam]—you might as well write it as I say it—the scum of the earth” (70). By
publishing this article about the conflicts between mainstream Americans and
minorities that took place in another
city, The New Yorker hints at the importance of civic solidarity for the
city of New York.
Surveying the ways in which the American media has represented
and shaped crises of national import over the past two centuries, Mike Maher
and Lloyd Chiasson Jr. reach a somber conclusion: “Recent critics have shown
that media portrayals consistently emphasize people rather than issues, crisis
rather than continuity, the present rather than the past or the future” (219). The New Yorker's coverage of September
11, insofar as it concerns the consequences of the attacks for New York and its
citizens, departs from this model by seeking reconciliation rather than
conflict, solidarity rather than strife. The articles concentrate on a wide
spectrum of issues essential to the civic life of a city. Finding the
appropriate means to express communal grief through language and art is one;
protecting the diverse social structure of a cosmopolitan city from ethnic or
religious fragmentation is another. No less significant is the issue of
orienting the present towards the future, one where the past will acquire an
empowering presence in civic memory. Through its extensive coverage of
September 11, aimed mainly at enhancing the civic solidarity of New York and
its citizens, The New Yorker offers
one significant example of how the press can respond to times of crisis.
Anderson, Jon Lee. “ City of Dreams. ” The New Yorker. 24-31 Dec. 2001: 50+.
Angell,
Roger. “Uniform Bliss.” The New Yorker.
12 Nov. 2001: 90-95.
Baughman, James. " Take Me Away from
Manhattan: The New York City and American Mass Culture, 1930-1990. "Capital of the American Century: The
National and International Influence of New York City.” Ed. Martin Shefter.
New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1993. 117-143.
Bellaigue,
Christopher de. “The Lost City.
” The New Yorker. 21 Jan.
2002: 28-33.
Boxer, Sarah. “A Funny New Yorker Map Is
Again the Best Defense. " New York
Times. 8 Dec. 2001, late ed.: A13.
Carr, David. “In Surprise, Parenting
Wins Top Award for Magazines. ” New York
Times. 8 May 2003, late ed.: C6.
Conant, Oliver. “Some Thoughts on The New Yorker, New and Old. ” Dissent. 41.1 (1994): 127-30.
Denby, David. “Talking Pictures. ” The New Yorker. 1 Oct. 2001: 120-121.
Erdely, Sabina Rubin. “Get Your Gas Masks
Here. ” The New Yorker. 15 Oct. 2001:
58+.
Franklin, Nancy. “The Curtain Rises. ” The New Yorker. 1 Oct. 2001: 118-119.
Friend, Tad. “Is It Funny Yet? ” The New Yorker. 11 Feb. 2002: 28+.
Ghosh, Amitav. No title given. The New Yorker. 24 Sep. 2001: 32+.
Goldberger, Paul. “Building Plans. ” The New Yorker. 24 Sep. 2001: 76-78.
-----. “Lights Out. ” The New Yorker. 15 Apr. 2002: 34.
-----. “Requiem. ” The New Yorker. 14 Jan. 2002: 90-91.
Gopnik, Adam. “The City and the Pillars. ” The New Yorker. 24 Sep. 2001: 34+.
-----. “Urban Renewal. ” The New Yorker. 1 Oct. 2001: 66-69.
Kuczynski, Alex. “The New Yorker Sets Record at Magazine Awards. ” New York Times. 3 May 2001, late ed.:
C6.
Lane, Anthony. “This Is Not a Movie. ” The New Yorker. 24 Sep. 2001: 79-80.
Lazare, Daniel. “The New Yorker Goes to War. ” Nation.
2 June 2003: 25-31.
Maher, Mike, and Lloyd Chiasson Jr. “The
Press and Crisis: What Have We Learned?” The
Press in Times of Crisis. Ed. Lloyd Chiasson Jr. Westport, CT: Greenwood,
1995. 219-223.
Manoff, Robert Karl. “Writing the News (By Telling the ‘Story’).
” Reading the News. Eds. Robert Karl
Manoff and Michael Schudson. Pantheon Guide to Popular Culture Ser. New York:
Pantheon, 1987. 197-229.
Meyerowitz, Joel. “Looking South. ” The New Yorker. 24 Sep. 2001: 48-53.
“The
Nation. ” Entry 5621. Magazines for
Libraries. Ed. Bill Katz and Linda Sternberg Katz. 9th ed. New
Providence, NJ: Bowker, 1997.
“The
New Yorker. ” Entry 3834. Magazines
for Libraries. Ed. Bill Katz and Linda Sternberg Katz. 9th ed.
New Providence, NJ: Bowker, 1997.
Paumgarten, Nick. “ Trumpery below Canal. ” The New Yorker. 18-25 Feb. 2002:
58.
Purnick, Joyce. “New Degree of Horror
Changes New York, Temporarily, into a Small Town. ” New York Times. 12 Sep. 2001, late ed.: A6.
Remnick, David. “Many Voices. ” 15 Oct.
2001: 53-54.
Ross, Alex. “Requiems. ” The New Yorker. 8 Oct. 2001: 78-80.
Singer, Mark. “ Home Is Here. ” The New Yorker. 15 Oct. 2001: 62-70.
Smith, Lee. “ Cleats, Dates, and Goats. ” The New Yorker. 24-31 Dec. 2001: 48.
Spiegelman, Art. " Re: Cover. How It Came to Be. " The New Yorker. Online 3 Oct. 2001. 6
May 2002 http://www.newyorker.com/online/covers/ ?011008on_onlineonly01.
Thomas, M. Wynn. “ Fratricide and Brotherly
Love: Whitman and the Civil War. ” The
Cambridge Companion to Whitman. Ed. Ezra Greenspan. Cambridge: Cambridge
UP, 1995. 27-44.
Thurman, Judith. “ The Women. ” The New Yorker. 26 Nov. 2001: 42+.
Tomkins, Calvin. “ Towers of Light. ” The New Yorker. 1 Oct. 2001: 39.
Updike, John. No title given. The New Yorker. 24 Sep. 2001: 28-29.
Weimann, Gabriel. Communicating Unreality: Modern Media and the Reconstruction of Reality.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2000.
Yagoda, Ben. “ An American Icon: High
Seriousness to 1990s Buzz. ” Chronicle of
Higher Education. 31 July 1998: B6-7.
Younger, Ben. “ Notes from Ground Zero. ” The New Yorker. 15 Oct. 2001: 54+.
Ziegler, Jack. Cartoon. The New Yorker. 12 Nov. 2001: 96.
* An earlier version of this paper was delivered at the May 2002 Ege University 7th Cultural Studies Symposium, “Selves at Home, Selves in Exile: Stories of Emplacement and Displacement,” Izmir, Turkey.