Reviews for Windows on the World

The average rating for Windows on the World based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-08-07 00:00:00 Brandi Apps We know that none of the 1,344 people trapped on the nineteen floors above survived. Obviously, this piece of information removes any element of suspense from this book. So much the better: this isn't a thriller; it is simply an attempt'doomed, perhaps'to describe the indescribable. One of my reading resolutions for 2018 is to complete all of the past winners of the two premier prizes for literature in English translation - the Best Translated Book Award from the US and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize / Man Booker International in the UK. I've completed the BTBA, and this wass one of a handful left to read from the IFFP/MBI. Windows on the World, translated by the wonderful Frank Wynne (@terribleman) won the 2005 IFFP, beating off competition from inter alia, two excellent books I have read - Orhan Pamuk's Snow, perhaps his finest work, and the lower profile but very strong Budapest by Chico Buarque. Windows on the World tells the story of a family trapped in the eponymous restaurant on top of the North Tower (the first struck, but last to fall) of the World Trade Centre on 11th September 2001. The story - of divorced Texan realtor Carthew Yorsten and his sons (aged 7 and 9) - is told in chapters each representing a minute from 8.30am, through the strike at 8.46am, through to the towers collapse at 10.28am. Carthew's account opens (with a later acknowledged nod to American Beauty): In two hours I'll be dead; in a way, I am dead already, although it is mostly told in the moment rather than through later reflection. As they look through the windows (later spotting the oddly low flying plane approaching) Carsten tells his children about the tightrope walk between the towers in 1974 by Frenchman Philippe Petit: "What's a Frenchman?" the kids ask. I explain that France is a small European country that helped America to free itself from the yoke of English oppression between 1776 and 1783 and that, to show our appreciation, our soldiers liberated them from the Nazis in 1944. (I'm simplifying, obviously, for educational purposes.) And the narration alternates with chapters by the author of this work - also called Frédéric Beigbeder - reflecting on the events of that day and also describing his process of writing the novel, a form of auto-fiction. A lot of this appears to be purely personal - I'm wandering the streets of a threatened city looking for my navel he admits at one point - but it does all link nicely back to his interpretation of the events of that day. Indeed he muses that perhaps he has invented a new form auto-satire, since his own parallel story is unsentimental, at times blackly humorous, but also self-depreciating. For example on the restaurant he writes: Windows on the World. My first impression is that the name is slightly pretentious. A little self-indulgent, especially for a skyscraper which houses stockbrokers, banks and financial markets. It's possible to see the words as one more proof of American condescension: "This building overlooks the nerve center of world capitalism and cordially suggests you go fuck yourselves." In fact, it was a pun on the name of the World Trade Center. Windows on the "World." As usual, with my traditional French sullenness I see arrogance where there was nothing but a lucid irony. Other possible names for the World Trade Center restaurant: Windows on the Planes Windows on the Crash Windows on the Smoke Broken Windows. Sorry for that bout of black humor: a momentary defense against the atrocity. The relationship between France and the US - culturally and politically - is key to Beigbeder's thoughts. His section of the novel is set in February 2003, when French Fries were even renamed Freedom Fries: The largest antiwar demonstration for fifty years; it is February 15, 2003. Yesterday, the U.S. took on France in the U.N. Security Council. Since war has been declared between France and the United States, you have to be careful when choosing sides if you don't want to wind up being fleeced later. Beigbeder comes down firmly on the side of American culture (but not politics), proclaiming (rather implausibly in my personal view) even the superiority of its literature, but strongly against its sense of chauvinism. He quotes a relevant Walt Whitman poem then comments: The title of Whitman's poem is "Salut au Monde!". In the nineteenth century, American poets spoke French. I am writing this book because I'm sick of bigoted anti-Americanism. Many people believe that European artists have a superiority complex when it comes to their American counterparts, but they're mistaken: they have an inferiority complex. Anti-Americanism is in large part jealousy and unrequited love. Deep down, the rest of the world admires American art and resents the United States for not returning the favor. What bothers us is not American imperialism, but American chauvinism, its cultural isolation, its complete lack of any curiosity about foreign work (except in New York and San Francisco). As for the cultural exception to American cultural hegemony that is France, contrary to what a recently dismissed CEO had to say, it is not dead: it consists in churning out exceptionally tedious movies, exceptionally slapdash books and, all in all, works of art which are exceptionally pedantic and self-satisfied. It goes without saying that I include my own work in this sorry assessment. He is also excellent on the differing reactions of he and his colleagues in France as the events unfolded, depending on their personalities: Narcissistic: "Fuck'I was just up there a month ago!" Statistical: "My God, how many people are trapped in there? The death toll must be 20,000!" Paranoid: "Jesus, well, since I look like an Arab, I'm bound to get stopped by the cops every five minutes for the next couple of weeks." Anxious: "We've got to call our friends over there, make sure they're all right." Laconic: "Well, this is no joke." Marketing: "This is going to be great for the ratings, we should buy space on LCI." Bellicose: "Fuck! This is it, it's the Third World War." Security conscious: "They need to put cops on all the planes and bulletproof doors on the cockpits." Nostradamus: "You see? I told you this would happen, I even wrote it." Media savvy: "Shit, I have to get over to Europe 1 and give my reaction." Knee-jerk anti-American: "This is what happens when you try and control the world." His own reaction, even on later reflection in the novel, leans towards that of 'Security conscious', arguing that if all nightclubs (which both his character and his authorial alter-ego frequent with alarming frequency) can have security guards, then why don't planes. The actual account of Carsten and his sons is in some senses the weakest part of the novel from a pure drama perspective. As the author proclaims up front, we know how it ends and, in reality, despite their best efforts there was little for those trapped to do but wait and die: I'd like to tell you a bunch of crazy action-packed anecdotes full of twists and surprises, but the truth is: nothing happened. But the real strength of this section, which builds on what we do know from transcripts of phone calls made by those trapped, is to make real the brutality of what those trapped suffered. Beigbeder argues, reasonably convincingly, that much of this has been self-censored: Five minutes after the first plane crashed into our tower, the tragedy was already a hostage to fortune in a media war. And patriotism? Of course. Knee-jerk patriotism made the American press swagger about, censor our suffering, edit out shots of the jumpers, the photographs of those burn victims, the body parts. But already it was war; in time of war, you hush up the damage done by the enemy. It's important to put up a good show, it's part of the propaganda. But even he draws the line at some points: I have cut out the awful descriptions. I have not done so out of propriety, nor out of respect for the victims because I believe that describing their slow agonies, their ordeal, is also a mark of respect. I cut them because, in my opinion, it is more appalling still to allow you to imagine what became of them. His approach - brutal honesty over sentimentality - is best illustrated when the Beigbeder author character does, for once, take a heroic view of those who choose to jump: They are human because they decide to choose how they will die rather than allow themselves to be burned. One last manifestation of dignity: they will have chosen their end rather than waiting resignedly. Never has the expression "freefall" made more sense. But he immediately has his fictional character who actually witnessed events retort: Bullshit, my dear Beigbeder. If somewhere between thirty-seven and fifty people threw themselves from the top of the North Tower, it was simply because everything else was impossible, suffocation, pain, the instinct to survive, because jumping couldn't be worse than staying in this suffocating furnace. and for one person who does take that route, hoping that a tablecloth might act as a makeshift parachute: I would have liked to be able to say that he made it, but people would simply criticize me for the same reason they criticized Spielberg when he had water gush through the nozzles in the gas chambers. Jeffrey didn't land gracefully on his toes. Within seconds his derisory piece of fabric became a torch. Jeffrey literally exploded on the plaza, killing a firefighter and the woman he was rescuing. Jeffrey's wife got the news of his death from his boyfriend. She found out he was bisexual and that he was dead in the same instant. If I'd hoped to tell charming stories, I picked the wrong subject. This case of character talking to author, is isolated, but he does allow his author to meet Carthew Yorsten's former girlfriend in a bar in New York 2003. The playboy character (and unusual name) of Carthew Yorsten is a rather odd feature of the novel, in that quite a lot of the narration is taken up in the rather seamy life of this one particular fictional character, but it felt as if Yorsten was n some senses a American version of Beigbeder, and a late (and real-world) revelation neatly justifies this interpretation and explains the choice of name. The novel perhaps doesn't read quite so well, or quite so controversially, as when first released, due to the passage of time. In particular Beigbeder's proclamation that there is a communist utopia; that utopia died in 1989;there is a capitalist utopia; that utopia died in 2001 seems rather hyperbolic read in 2018 - if the history of the death of capitalism is to be written September 2008 is likely to figure rather more prominently than September 2001 (albeit one could make a link that one was the consequence of the re-inflation of the economy following the other). Although Beigbeder's stronger argument is that 9/11 ended the trust in technology that dated from the 1970s - he has his character take one of the last flights on Concorde (and one link he fails to mention is that the first passenger flight of Concorde post the July 2000 crash of Air France Flight 4590 landed on 11 September 2001). And the 1970s utopia, as he calls it, was one in which both author and main character spent their lives - for one his life ended on 9/11 and for the other that particular world ended. Even Beigbeder's conclusion neatly encapsulates the blend of hyperbole and sarcastic self-depreciation that characterises the work: I truly don't know why I wrote this book. Perhaps because I couldn't see the point of speaking of anything else. What else is there to write? The only interesting subjects are those which are taboo. We must write what is forbidden. French literature is a long history of disobedience. Nowadays, books must go where television does not. Show the invisible, speak the unspeakable. It may be impossible, but that is its raison d'être. Literature is a "mission impossible." In saying that, I realize that I'm not being honest. I am also obliged to concede that in leaning on the first great hyperterrorist attack, my prose takes on a power which it would not otherwise. Overall, so much more than an imaginative recount of the events of that day (indeed if it were only that it would be much less of a success - the actual transcripts of the calls from the Towers themselves published e.g. by The New York Times stand as an equally if not more effective account of the day). While I would have given the award to Snow, still a worthy winner of the IFFP.

Review # 2 was written on 2009-04-01 00:00:00 Gregory Breier I couldn't decide on what star rating to give this. This is, at once, the most horribly self-indulgent book I've ever read, and one of the most insightful looks into today that I've ever seen. The author is an asshole, who blends himself with the fictional character constantly. But I've been reading a ton of French philosophy and perspectives on America recently. He's drawing a lot of it from that. This book is an attempt at the hyperreal novel. Where fiction becomes more real than reality. What can you say about that? I don't like the main character, or, honestly, any of the characters. But the philosophy, the philosophy is real. Beigbeder understands generation and thought and the reality of horror. He deconstructs symbolism when the world is making nothing but symbols. He sees the meaning in meaning nothing. So I feel that it is worth reading. I would recommend it to anyone, especially those well read in French accounts of America -- Toqueville, Baudrillard, etc. It's a quick read, anyway. But how do I feel about it? I'm not sure. I think that I need to think about it. In short: swallow his egotism. It is worth it by the time you reach 10:28.