I have a problem with this: the default critique these days for books and albums of a somber mood seems to be to imply that they reference or obliquely address a post 9/11 world. The ashes from that day seem to pall every important new work of art. “Clearly a reference to†is a nightstick critics wield with a certain swagger. Of course, as usual when I let myself topple into tirade, I have no example to point to or truck out in my defense except a certain impression of surfeit that must be the result of accumulated instances, right? America suddenly has a copyright on disaster; let no one else’s grief infringe thereon. Of course our Promised Land, ’tis of thee, has always taken woe quite personally, or do I mean myopically and hubristically? Even our disasters, supersized, are bigger than your disasters, and ditto with our suffering, or so the t-shirts for sale in the French Quarter would have had me believe when I was there in November ’05 as a volunteer. Walls plastered with wreaths and photos of missing loved ones existed elsewhere before Ground Zero and Union Square—notably, the 1999 Taiwan quake—though we see them only as 9/11 references. » Read the rest of this entry «
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