TWO AUTHORS ON THEIR ROAD TO 9/11: UPDIKE AND ROTH
TWO AUTHORS ON THEIR ROAD TO 9/11: UPDIKE AND ROTH

Summary/Abstract: Roth had set one of his masterpieces, American Pastoral, in his home town, Newark, New Jersey. However, it was the half fictional, half only-too-real Newark, New Jersey as starting point for his alternative historical novel The Plot Against America that both links him and his novel to John Updike and his novel Terrorist and to what has come to be called 9/11 or post 9/ 11 literature. In the “pre- 9/11 age,” both Roth and Updike had long distinguished careers defined by the creation of apparently diametrically opposed narratives about different sections of post-war multi-ethnic America. However, throughout their long careers, they had gradually developed a vision and a style that prepared them to deal with the scope of the cultural context and with fear, trauma and loss and ways of dealing with them which will become hallmarks of 9/11 literature, a topic that will be developed in a subsequent article.

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