110 Stories: New York Writes after September 11 [Paperback]

Ulrich Baer (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0814799353 | ISBN-13: 978-0814799352 | Publication Date: August 4, 2004

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New York is a city of writers. And when the city was attacked on 9/11, its writers began to do what writers do, they began to look and feel and think and write, began to struggle to process an event unimaginable before, and even after, it happened. The work of journalists appeared immediately, in news reports, commentaries, and personal essays. But no single collection has yet recorded how New York writers of fiction, poetry, and dramatic prose have responded to 9/11.

Now, in 110 Stories, Ulrich Baer has gathered a multi-hued range of voices that convey, with vivid immediacy and heightened imagination, the shock and loss suffered in September. From a stunning lineup of 110 renowned and emerging writers-including Paul Auster, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Edwidge Danticat, Vivian Gornick, Phillip Lopate, Dennis Nurkse, Melvin Bukiet, Susan Wheeler-these stories give readers not so much an analysis of what happened as the very shape and texture of a city in crisis, what it felt like to be here, the external and internal damage that the city and its inhabitants absorbed in the space and the aftermath of a few unforgettable hours. As A.M. Homes says in one of the book's eyewitness accounts, "There is no place to put this experience, no folder in the mental hard drive that says, 'catastrophe.' It is not something that you want to remember, not something that you want to forget." This collection testifies to the power of poetry and storytelling to preserve and give meaning to what seems overwhelming. It showcases the literary imagination in its capacity to gauge the impact of 9/11 on how we view the world.

Just as the stories of the World Trade towers were filled with people from all walks of life, the stories collected here reflect New York's true diversity, its boundless complexity and polyglot energy, its regenerative imagination, and its spirit of solidarity and endurance.

The editor's proceeds will be donated to charity. Cover art donated by Art Spiegelman.

List of Contributors: Humera Afridi, Ammiel Alcalay, Elena Alexander, Meena Alexander, Jeffery Renard Allen, Roberta Allen, Jonathan Ames, Darren Aronofsky, Paul Auster, Jennifer Belle, Jenifer Berman, Charles Bernstein, Star Black, Breyten Breytenbach, Melvin Jules Bukiet, Peter Carey, Lawrence Chua, Ira Cohen, Imraan Coovadia, Edwidge Danticat, Alice Elliot, Eric Darton, Lydia Davis, Samuel R. Delany, Maggie Dubris, Rinde Eckert, Janice Eidus, Masood Farivar, Carolyn Ferrell, Richard Foreman, Deborah Garrison, Amitav Ghosh, James Gibbons, Carol Gilligan, Thea Goodman, Vivian Gornick, Tim Griffin, Lev Grossman, John Guare, Sean Gullette, Jessica Hagedorn, Kimiko Hahn, Nathalie Handal, Carey Harrison, Joshua Henkin, Tony Hiss, David Hollander, A.M. Homes, Richard Howard, Laird Hunt, Siri Hustvedt, John Keene, John Kelly, Wayne Koestenbaum, Richard Kostelanetz, Guy Lesser, Jonathan Lethem, Jocelyn Lieu, Tan Lin, Sam Lipsyte, Phillip Lopate, Karen Malpede, Charles McNulty, Pablo Medina, Ellen Miller, Paul D. Miller/DJ Spooky, Mark Jay, Tova Mirvis, Albert Mobilio, Alex Molot, Mary Morris, Tracie Morris, Anna Moschovakis, Richard Eoin Nash, Josip Novakovich, Dennis Nurkse, Geoffrey O'Brien, Larry O'Connor, Robert Polito, Nelly Reifler, Rose-Myriam Réjouis, Roxana Robinson, Avital Ronell, Daniel Asa Rose, Joe Salvatore, Grace Schulman, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Dani Shapiro, Akhil Sharma, Suzan Sherman, Jenefer Shute, Hal Sirowitz, Pamela Sneed, Chris Spain, Art Spiegelman, Catharine R. Stimpson, Liz Swados, Lynne Tillman, Mike Topp, David Trinidad, Val Vinokurov, Chuck Wachtel, Mac Wellman, Owen West, Rachel Wetzsteon, Susan Wheeler, Peter Wortsman, John Yau, Christopher Yu.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A smart idea...[drawing from] the incredible talent pool of New York City writers to consecrate the attack on the World Trade Center."

-Kirkus Reviews,

"A decent 9/11 novel may be far off, but the best first passes at essays, fiction, and poetry are finally in one place."

-New York Metro.Com,

"The best of these pieces by novelists and poets write about it the way that all great writing happens—they come at it sideways, or with complete indirection, sometimes in metaphor, and write about love, selfishness, lust, dieting, the lives of the rain, and in one case, from the perspective of a rat in the sewer below the towers."

-Clean Sheets,

"The result is this excellent collection of fiction, nonfiction and poetry written in reaction to the tragedy by a stellar list of contributors."

-The Kansas City Star,

"Ulrich Baer has gathered a mulit-hued range of voices that convey, with vivid immediacy and heightened imagination, the shock and loss suffered in September."

-The Harvard Bookstore,

About the Author

Ulrich Baer is associate professor of German literature at New York University. He is the author of several books on the representation of trauma in poetry, literature, and photography.

Product Details

• Paperback: 344 pages
• Publisher: NYU Press (August 4, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814799353
• ISBN-13: 978-0814799352
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 4.8 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #739,962 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a reader from Washington, September 3, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: 110 Stories: New York Writes after September 11 (Hardcover)

In the flood of publications about 9/11, there is not much that will not be covered by television specials. And of those topics, many will be too painful to revisit again after 9/11 -- for the survivors and families of victims, of course, the pain will not go away even if we try to move on. 110 Stories: New York Writes After September stands out from the many books for several reasons. It offers the voices of extremely sensitive, articulate and exciting New York-based authors to give expression to the terrible events of that day, to render the experience more humanly accessible, and to allow us to approach that day in ways that will not numb our senses. In fact, literature here serves as a way to make the process of mourning and remembrance possible. I applaud the writers in this collection for taking the risks necessary to produce powerful writing. The poem by Edwidge Danticat made me cry, and the short story by Carolyn Ferrell about one of the many victims in the tower allowed me a glimpse into a lost life without ever turning maudlin or exploitative. Others might like to hear how Darren Aronofsky (one of our best film directors: check out Requiem for a Dream!) remembers the World Trade Center, or how playwright Richard Foreman tackles an event that defies the imagination. If you care about New York and if you want to read how literature can testify to the horrors of 9/11 without sensationalizing them, 110 Stories is an amazing choice.

19 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Good idea POORLY executed., August 7, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: 110 Stories: New York Writes after September 11 (Hardcover)

...I purchased this book impulsively, in part because the idea of New York writers addressing 9-11 (110 stories for the 110 floors in the WTC) struck me as a fine idea, and because several of the contributors -- Paul Auster, Tony Hiss, Jonathan Ames, and others -- are people whose work I admire. Sadly, few pieces here are worth the time or money. I was most taken by a contribution by Roberta Allen, from which one can derive the mayhem, the confusion, the disbelief, the fear, that New Yorkers experienced on that day. ...Many of the pieces are not expressly about 9-11, but instead mention in passing the World Trade Center, a character in a piece that takes place in New York. I was, perhaps, most disappointed by the Jonathan Ames contribution. Ames has made a reputation for chronicling his sexual escapades and is frequently quite funny. His piece has no business in this collection. It entails his being a writer-in-residence at an all girls college outside New York, and deals with his lecherous desire to steel glimpses of young girls...as they play tennis. What this has to do with 9-11, I've NO idea. Many of the pieces seem rushed, as if they were taken from a first draft. Tony Hiss's piece interestingly recounts the history of the so-called Lower Westside, and the coming of age of the Trade Center. He concludes the essay with a comment on the buildings and that day. "Then they fell," he writes, "and the city had lost too many, too much, too quickly." That would have been a fine conclusion. But then he adds, "The smile of the skyline had missing teeth." Huh? For me, at least, that last line, which should have been vetted, ruined the entire piece. Since 9-11, I've read so much, so many people trying to put it into perspective, adding their 'insight.' But they have none to share. Words are too feeble to express what I am, and likely most people are, thinking. If you're looking for comfort, understanding, if you're looking for insight, perspective,or anything close to it, this book is likely the LAST thing you should read. It's a cut-and-paste job put out by people who have no great understanding of what happened that day or, for that matter, no true understanding of how they themselves feel or how what they experienced will ultimately change them.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 110 different perspectives, August 16, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: 110 Stories: New York Writes after September 11 (Hardcover)

As a reader from Berlin, Germany, I find "110 stories" an interesting approach to understanding what the events of 9/11 meant to the people of New York. Having read many articles by correspondents, journalists, political analysts, who have mostly flown into the city to cover the story, hearing the voices of people who talk about their own lives in their home city offers an insight I did not have before.

I am surprised that one reader from New York finds it disturbing to find so many different views in the collection; some of the criticism expressed in his review point to things which make the book special and valuable to me:
For instance, pieces which were written before Sept 11, and are included in "110 stories", are a very important part of remembering. How can we remember what we have lost if we forget what it was like before? Who would not remember his or her visits to the "Windows of the World", or the photograph of the towers one took on a first visit to New York, when trying to understand what happened on 9/11?
And, writers, or poets, do not have to limit their work to what might be suitable for a newspaper report. What they write in order to express what they see, hear, and feel, thinking about the tragedy of the twin towers, has to be different from what I expect to hear on "60 minutes" or read in "Newsweek".
The good thing about "110 stories" is that it features such a wide range of views, of literary techniques, of backgrounds and opinions. Nobody will agree with, or love, every single of the pieces included in the collection, as nobody will grasp the whole meaning of what happened one year ago in New York.
New York, to a reader from Europe, is an international, a multi-faceted city, with millions of different people and ideas and views. I expect from a book entitled "New York writes after Sept 11" precisely the diversity of form and perspective that the book delivers.