The Second Plane - September 11: Terror and Boredom

Zusatztext “Powerful and prescient. . . . Behind the endlessly inventive language [is] an intellectual rigor based on an unwavering belief in the power of reason.” — Financial Times “ The Second Plane bristles with intelligence [and] snaps and snarls.” — The Washington Post “A walking tour of the motley post-September 11th mind-its fears, madnesses, misapprehension and insights.” — New York Observer “A choreographer of imagination and ideas, [Amis] is bracing and morally brave.” — Los Angeles Times Informationen zum Autor MARTIN AMIS is the author of 15 novels—among them  Zone of Interest, London Fields, Time’s Arrow, The Information, and Night Train —along with the memoir  Experience,  the novelized self-portrait  Inside Story , two collections of stories, and seven nonfiction books. He died in 2023. Klappentext A master not only of fiction but also of fiercely controversial political engagement! Martin Amis here gathers fourteen pieces that constitute an evolving! provocative! and insightful examination of the most momentous event of our time.At the heart of this collection is the long essay "Terror and Boredom!” an unsparing analysis of Islamic fundamentalism and the West's flummoxed response to it! while other pieces address the invasion of Iraq! the realities of Iran! and Tony Blair's lingering departure from Downing Street (and also his trips to Washington and Iraq). Whether lambasted for his refusal to kowtow to Muslim pieties or hailed for his common sense! wide reading! and astute perspective! Amis is indisputably a great pleasure to read—informed! elegant! surprising—and this collection a resounding contemplation of the relentless! manifold dangers we suddenly find ourselves living with. Leseprobe It was the advent of the second plane, sharking in low over the Statue of Liberty: that was the defining moment. Until then, America thought she was witnessing nothing more serious than the worst aviation disaster in history; now she had a sense of the fantastic vehemence ranged against her.I have never seen a generically familiar object so transformed by affect (“emotion and desire as influencing behavior”). That second plane looked eagerly alive, and galvanized with malice, and wholly alien. For those thousands in the South Tower, the second plane meant the end of everything. For us, its glint was the worldflash of a coming future.Terrorism is political communication by other means. The message of September 11 ran as follows: America, it is time you learned how implacably you are hated. United Airlines Flight 175 was an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, launched in Afghanistan, and aimed at her innocence. That innocence, it was here being claimed, was a luxurious and anachronistic delusion.A week after the attack, one is free to taste the bile of its atrocious ingenuity. It is already trite but stringently necessary to emphasize that such a mise en scène would have embarrassed a studio executive’s storyboard or a thriller-writer’s notebook (“What happened today was not credible” were the stunned and wooden words of Tom Clancy, the author of The Sum of All Fears ). And yet in broad daylight and full consciousness that outline became established reality: a score or so of Stanley knives produced two million tons of rubble. Several lines of U.S. policy were bankrupted by the events of last Tuesday, among them national missile defense. Someone realized that the skies of America were already teeming with missiles, each of them primed and cocked.The plan was to capture four airliners in the space of half an hour. All four would be bound for the west coast, to ensure maximum fuel load. The first would crash into the North Tower just as the working day hit full stride. Then a pause of fifteen minutes, to give the world time to gather round its TV sets. With that attention se...

Product details

• Authors: Martin Amis
• Publisher: Vintage USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 07.04.2009
• EAN: 9781400096008
• ISBN: 978-1-4000-9600-8
• No. of pages: 224
• Dimensions: 130 mm x 203 mm x 15 mm
• Series: Vintage International; Vintage International
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Non-fiction book