Pathways to Terror: Teaching 9/11 Fiction

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the growing subset of genre fiction that we might call ‘9/11 fiction’. The coordinated terrorist attacks that took place on 11 September 2001 resulted in almost 3000 deaths, the largest death toll of any terrorist attack in history. Writers have been trying to assess the impact and implications of the attacks ever since. ‘Though a glut of material has appeared on the subject of September 11’, the writer Joyce Carol Oates observed in 2006, ‘very few writers of fiction have taken up the challenge and still fewer have dared to venture close to the actual event’ (Oates 2006: 33). This assessment now seems premature at best. At least one short story about the events of 9/11 appeared as early as 2002—John Updike’s ‘The Varieties of Religious Experience’ (2002)—but around the same time that Oates complained about a dearth of fiction on the subject, novels and short stories about 9/11 started appearing regularly, marking a new literary genre.