9/11 Gothic: Decrypting Ghosts and Trauma in New York City’s Terrorism Novels

Danel Olson

doi:10.5771/9781793638335

Summary

Published to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks, 9/11 Gothic: Decrypting Ghosts and Trauma in New York City’s Terrorism Novels returns to the ruins and anguish of 9/11 to pose a question not yet addressed by scholarship. Two time World Fantasy Award-winning writer Danel Olson asks how, why, and where New York City novels capture the terror of the Al-Qaeda mass murders through a supernatural lens. This book explores ghostly presences from the world’s largest crime scene in novels by Don DeLillo, Jonathan Safran Foer, Lynne Sharon Schwartz, Griffin Hansbury, and Patrick McGrath—all of whom have been called writers of Gotham. Arguing how theories on trauma and the Gothic can combine to explain ghostly encounters civilian survivors experience in fiction, Olson shares what those eerie meetings express about grief, guilt, love, memory, sex, and suicidal urges. This book also explores why and how paths to recovery open for these ghost-visited survivors in the fiction of catastrophe from the early twenty-first century.

Keywords

Search publication

Bibliographic data

Edition: 1/2021
Copyright year: 2021
ISBN-Print: 978-1-7936-3832-8
ISBN-Online: 978-1-7936-3833-5
Publisher: Lexington, Lanham
Language: English
Pages: 218
Product type: Book Titles

1. Contents No access
2. List of Figures No access
3. Acknowledgments No access
1. A Gothic Intervention in Approaches to 9/11 Fiction No access
2. Critical Currents No access
3. Notes No access
1. Critical Reception No access
2. Freud, the Uncanny, and Disaster Ghosts No access
3. The Erotics of 9/11 No access
4. The Viral Transmission of Trauma No access
5. Conclusion No access
6. Notes No access
1. Critical Reception No access
2. Establishing Gothic Tendencies inside the Quest No access
3. The Shakespearean Gothic Connection No access
4. Behind Every Trauma Stands Another No access
5. Memory Debates No access
6. Conclusion No access
7. Notes No access
1. Critical Reception No access
2. Gothic Scripts No access
3. A Clamor of Ghosts No access
4. The Twins’ Toys and Gothicized Play Therapy No access
5. Art, Lovers, and Gothic Contamination No access
6. On the Terrors of the Future No access
7. Doppelgängers and Perpetrators No access
8. Pursuing Revenge No access
9. Conclusion No access
10. Notes No access
1. Critical Reception No access
2. The Necessary Ghost No access
3. Castration Anxiety No access
4. Conclusion No access
5. Note No access
1. Critical Reception No access
2. Ghost Sightings No access
3. Whores and Psychiatrists No access
4. Conclusion No access
5. Note No access
Conclusion No access Pages 163 - 170
Appendix 1: Further Reading No access Pages 171 - 174
Appendix 2: Interview at the Opening of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, New York City, with Its Executive Vice President and Director Alice M. Greenwald (June 16, 2014) No access Pages 175 - 184
Bibliography No access Pages 185 - 206
Index No access Pages 207 - 216
About the Author No access Pages 217 - 218