Oh I meant to say though that even if you have trouble following everything in IJ (which I did before I read some secondary literature on it), there are still so many great lines and passages to appreciate in isolation that it’s still a pretty rewarding read.

Yeah, that’s by far the toughest of the DFW works I’ve read. An important thing to remember is that you aren’t necessarily supposed to follow everything from the beginning. The book is written with that in mind. Ive also heard that the book is intended to have a parabolic structure, meaning that you’re kind of intended to reread the beginning after you finish it. I reread the first few chapters and was sort of inclined to do more than that except that even reading through the whole thing once had been such a task that I just didnt’ have it in me.

Brief Interviews With Hideous Men is a collection of short stories (sort of) that’s more accessible. And even the posthumously published The Pale King, while a little disorienting, isn’t nearly the bear that IJ is.

I’m not sure about this. There are plenty of opportunities to watch catastrophes unfold in real time. I think in many cases you end up with what’s called compassion fatigue, where the audience can’t find the will to care anymore because they feel like the problems are too big to solve and perhaps even inevitable.

Heh. Higher barrier to entry. You can say that again. I recently started “Infinite Jest” based on its reputation. I would say that I am enjoying it but I must admit that more than 100 pages in, I still have little idea of what the hell is going on. I’m an optimist by nature, so I’m confident I’ll be able to get over what you aptly describe as the “higher barrier to entry.”

Anyway, I did enjoy the essays you recommended, so thanks. Wallace’s riff in the first essay about hoping he was wrong about Bush is pretty poignant in retrospect.

I finished my studies in political science, so – eventhough that might sound arrogant – I definitely understand the reasons why it’s such a big deal. There hasn’t been an attack on the US mainland for a very long time, so an event like this will have a huge impact on how secure people feel.

I also think that the media played a huge role, especially for someone like me who doesn’t live in the US. The fact that you could actually see live (or almost live) footage of the attacks and then the collapse of the towers just made the whole event so much more “real” than it would’ve felt otherwise. That might be cynical, but I’m pretty sure that people in the western democracies would care more about genocides in Africa if they saw it live on TV.

OK.I worked and lived in NYC before Guliani and after 9/11.
By the way my workplace was 100 meters from twin towers.LOL.
I subjectively experienced and saw the difference in the application of the law.That’s all.

What about retirement?
Of course.- You did not asked me how travel abroad experience was changed after 9/11.
You did not asked me about entertainment because you poker professional.LOL.
Did you have some savings on your 401(K) plan before 9/11?

My point is that 9/11 was merely an opportunity to promulgate a “prevention over punishment” paradigm that was already in the works. I’m not disagreeing that the threat of terrorism has been very helpful in spreading this paradigm, but I don’t think that 9/11 was the genesis of it.

The first thing:
Come on Foucault.Almost immediately after the attacks, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced “a new paradigm.” Preventing terrorist acts, he said, was now more important than punishing crimes after the fact.The new paradigm encouraged the arrests of people thought to be dangerous for, as Ashcroft put it,“spitting on the sidewalk”.
His idea was propagated around the globe by different enforcement agency and applied wider that just act of terrorism.
The priority of Giuliani policy was about execution of law and order after the fact.
It was just one element of prevention of course.The efficient execution could prevent crime.

Of course you’re right, but the spitting on the sidewalk thing actually predates 9/11. Giuliani, who was mayor of NYC at the time of the 9/11 attacks, was already a popular Republican there because he reduced crime with what he called “Zero Tolerance Policing”. The idea was that by arresting people for trivial stuff like spitting, jay-walking, and other misdemeanors you could find a lot of people with outstanding warrants and otherwise get people off the streets who committed more serious offenses. In other words, the theory was that there was a lot of overlap between people who spit in the street and people who commit violent crime, so even if you didn’t catch them for the violent crime you could catch them for the spitting.

I’m curious about your reference to retirement. What do you have in mind when you say that?

If you like the pieces I linked here, check out his nonfiction collections Consider the Lobster and A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. My favorites are “Up, Simba” from CTL, which is about following McCain for a week during the 2000 campaign and touches on similar themes of cynicism vs idealism, and the title essay from ASFTINDA, which is about his experience on a luxury cruise. The latter is probably his single best piece of nonfiction and explores the theme he’s most famous for, which is America’s obsession with passive entertainment and freedom from responsibility. It’s also extremely funny and very well-written.

DFW’s fiction is also very good but has a much higher barrier to entry. Let me know if you enjoy the nonfiction stuff and I’ll make some suggestions, but generally his fiction is a lot of work (remember, he is struggling against passive entertainment) and rewards some familiarity with the contemporary literary scene.

To some extent, that was my reaction as well. I think for many Americans though it was a realization that we are not as secure as we supposed. The perception of security seems to be extremely important here. We have paid a lot, in both money and compromised freedoms, for what are in my opinion largely illusory security measures.

I think the symbolism of it is also very significant. Showing the world that the US still could be attacked, even at its economic and military hearts, was a big deal. And of course the US’ response, starting two wars and whatnot, was a big deal for the entire world.

In terms of memorializing it, I think it’s an important thing for our country to do because to some extent the people who did on 9/11 died on our behalf. That’s sort of the point DFW makes in the thought experiment that I linked, that if we want to have a free society we have to accept that there will occasionally be attacks like this, and some number of unlucky people will lose their lives so that we can all enjoy the society we want to have. It’s different from soldiers who die in combat, because those are people who knowingly and voluntarily risked their lives on our behalf, but I think the principle is the same.

I have long been intrigued by your interest in DFW. My google searches of him gave me no reason to read any further. Your piece today has convinced me to read his stuff. I’ll start with the pieces you reference and re-evaluate.

I understand why it’s such a big thing (and to this day I remember pretty well where I was when I first heard of the attacks and I’m not even american), but what’s 3000 dead compared to hundreds of thousands or even millions during civil wars in central Africa?

So I guess all I want to say is, that I’m really torn on this issue.