"Nightmare Ballet"

What started as an ordinary day ended unforgotten. "It seemed, at first glance, more curious than horrendous," John Updike wrote of the fall of the World Trade Center twin towers. Many others shared Updike's initial reaction on that fateful day; fascination, confusion, and the gut-wrenching moment when they realized the horror of the situation.

Countless pieces of literature have been written on the events of 9/11, but I have never seen two with such polar opposite tone and views than John Updike and Susan Sontag's works in The New Yorker's "Talk of the Town" section.

Updike's essay portrayed the crumbling of the twin towers as a beautiful nightmare, and yet unbelievably real. My favorite quote from this piece is as follows: "Amid the glittering impassivity of the many buildings across the East River, an empty sot had appeared, as if by electronic command, beneath the sky that, but for the sulfurous cloud streaming south toward the ocean, was pure blue, rendered uncannily pristine by the absence of jet trails." It illustrates a picture as real as any photograph and depicts the horrible beauty of what is missing from the image. Updike used this technique again at the end of the essay when he wrote, "the ruins were still sending out smoke, but New York looked glorious." It is an incredibly positive point that although the United States had just suffered a great tragedy, it would continue to stand strong and be the great country it was meant to be.

Sontag's essay on the other hand was unfortunately very negative. She repeatedly claimed that "the voices licensed to follow the event [seemed] to have joined together in a campaign to infantilize the public." While I don't doubt that the public was initially sheltered from the specific, gruesome details, I feel that at the time people were offered information they needed when it was appropriate. The one part of Sontag's essay that I did find agreeable was the last few lines: "'Our country is strong,' we are told again and again. I for one don't find this entirely consoling. Who doubts that America is strong? But that's not all America has to be," and that's not all America is.