September 04, 2003

So far, I've pretty much ignored the fracas over Frédéric Beigbeder's novel, "Windows on the World," mainly because I already know what happened in that skyborne restaurant atop the North tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and I didn't need to "make it up": everybody died.

But I was struck by quotes from Beigbeder in an Elle interview, via a breathless article in today's NYT:

"In the face of American self-censorship, I wanted to give form to this tragedy," [Beigbeder] said, adding that American television viewers saw "an asceptic, almost clinical" version of events. He said he wanted "to reinject colors, smells, noises, to reintroduce the human dimension that has been carefully removed," adding, "A novel should enter forbidden territory."

Now, speaking as someone who was there that day, I'm of several minds about this "self-censorship."

My first response is, What the hell are you talking about?

My second response is, Oh. You're French. And, France is...what, an entire ocean away from New York?

Then: Of course American television offered an "aseptic, clincial" experience. It's a piece of technology. A glass tube, coated with phosphors, illuminated by an electron gun. Or a plasma-pixel display, if you're into that, and can afford it. But wait...how did you get your experience? Oh, right...from television. Idiot.

Finally:I was there. So you can commence with the fucking off, right now.

What really interested me was the bit about "[giving] form to this tragedy," and, "[reinjecting] colors, smells, noises," and "[reintroducing] the human dimension that has been carefully removed."

To that end, allow me to reproduce for you here a brief portion of a note that I sent to Andrew Sullivan on February 6, 2002, in response to the USC Anti-War Conference's press-statement assertion about the sheep-like public's loss of "all sense of reality":

...reality, for me, is stealing a Mango Madness Snapple from the abandoned bodega at the corner of William Street and Pine Street, to clear the concrete and gypsum dust from my throat as I pedal my bicycle through the blizzard remains of 110 stories' worth of skyscraper, trying to get the hell out of downtown Manhattan.

I refuse to let some bunch of left-coast assholes who weren't there and don't still work three blocks from the site tell me that I've lost all sense of reality. Do they think that the Jerry Bruckheimer televised version they saw endlessly on cable for a week is all there was? They should try smelling it. They should try showering it off their bodies.

Sullivan's response was to send an e-mail to thank me for vividly reminding him of the reality of that day, and to to post my note in its entirety on his site on Feburary 7.

My response to Beigbeder is, You want to "give form" to something? Give form to this:

Fuck you, you pretentious prick. You weren't there, you don't know, and your profiteering grade-school prose is insipid and obscene.

Beigbeder is a near-perfect example of why Plato expelled poets and storytellers from his Republic: this Frenchman utters great and wise things which he himself does not understand. Despite his professed lofty goals, despite his supposedly selfless--but, in actuality, self-indulgent--desire to give form to that which needs no form given to it, his ultimate production is a pointless, ignorant and voyeuristic exposition of events about which he cannot possibly have any knowledge.

I know what the colors were, Beigbeder: midnight-black and ash gray. I wore them.

I know what the smells were, Beigbeder: when I opened the rack-pack on my commuting bicycle a week later, they wafted anew into my apartment in Queens...dry, dusty, full of jet fuel, burned metal, and death.

I know what the noises were, Beigbeder: I jumped from my office chair when the first tower fell with an all-encompassing rumble, knowing in my very spine that something even more atrocious than what I had seen fifteen minutes before from the asphalt of downtown Broadway had happened.

I know what the human dimension is, Beigbeder: I am, and so were those in Windows on the World, and so were the firemen, and so were the thousands who died, and so are the thousands upon thousands who knew them, and loved them, and even now are grieving.

We don't need you to "give form" to anything. I'd like to coat you in jet fuel, set you alight and toss you off the roof of my office building, which is--now--the tallest in downtown Manhattan. You'll get the colors, smells, and noises of the experience!

Is that territory "forbidden" enough for you?