The inevitable subgenre has been born--and credited with therapeutic powers:

As writers begin to bridge the divide between the very real events of 9/11 and fictional narrative, some readers may ask, What took so long?

In some ways, the answer is simple: It's all about timing. Novels, like any labor of love, take time to write, edit, and print. But less obvious factors - such as emotional timing - are also at play. As 9/11 becomes more distant, broaching the subject in a less literal way may be timely and appropriate for healing grief, some say.

Mental-health experts who have dealt with those directly affected by 9/11 give conflicting views about the ability of fictional accounts of that day to help people recover from grief.

Readers of the novels can "process the experience for themselves" if they have an opportunity to translate fictional accounts into a mode for assuaging grief, says Spencer Eth, medical director of behavioral health services and associate chairman of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the St. Vincent Catholic Medical Centers in New York. He's one who believes it's appropriate for 9/11 to be "embraced creatively and artistically."

But can literary leaps of faith effectively decode the emotions of that day? And will readers be receptive to these sweeping, interpretational stories?

Some may be too receptive. Images of the attacks are so visceral and so integral to the nation's "collective consciousness" that fictionalized accounts may lead some readers to believe that the "realism of drama" is the truth, says Laurie Nadel, a psychologist at the WTC Family Center in Rockville Centre, N.Y., which provides counseling to people who lost family members in the World Trade Center attacks.

Still, there's a good chance that many people even now are trying to "metabolize the meaning" of life after 9/11, Dr. Nadel says. For them, she adds, fiction can allow them to explore that.

Please tell me what you think "Atonement" was about, other than itself.

I completely agree with you about Foer -- Everything is Illuminated seemed half-baked at best. I couldn't understand why so many reviewers praised it to the heavens... it just wasn't especially coherent!

Perhaps the new novel will reflect a more mature, developed style. Maybe. I read Updike's review of it in the New Yorker a few weeks ago, and I'm not really convinced.

As for the 9/11 novel, I can't comment, as I haven't read a single one of the novels mentioned.

Erin,

Do I detect a slight undertone of derision in your comment about "the concept of socially therapeutic fiction"? I would argue that all fiction serves a psychotherapeutic function. And fiction consumers seek it out for precisely this purpose. "Projective identification" for the narcissists, might be one example...

Apparently you are not alone:

http://www.mobylives.com/Almond_Foer.html
http://www.nypress.com/18/15/news&columns/harrysiegel.cfm

The idea of socially therapeutic fiction seems to me to be a self-defeating one. If it were meant to be carthasis and help people come to terms with an event (thereby forgetting about it and moving on), then wouldn't the publication of more socially therapeutic fiction spell the end of major catastrophes' marketibility?

Then again, we get a new Holocaust book nearly each year so either that means society hasn't been "treated" yet about the event or they refuse to. Which really makes me wonder whether "socially therapeutic fiction" is meant to make one forget something or meant to dig it up from collective forgetfulness and foreground it again just when everyone else was about to move on in life. And what use is it if we don't want to forget?

I have a lot of trouble "getting into non-fiction that tries to dramatize real events. I am not sure at all as to how I would find the "9/11 novel" any more emotionally navigable, let alone theraputic. Is it supposed to bring me closer to the tragedy that I saw and felt from such a long distance away (thus "permitting" me to feel anger and grief over it all), or is my distance. In my area, it would be the equivalent of living the Galveston Hurricane, San Francisco Earthquake or the Tacoma Narrows bridge. It's just not something I can see a novel (or VR experience or whatever) helping me to better grasp.

Here is an old story come back to life.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/04/19/cumberland

Another novel that deals at least peripheraly with 9/11 is William Gibson's Pattern Recognition.

I'm a fan of the movie "Enduring Love" which was apparently based on a McEwan novel.

=darwin