Now playing in Peoria?

Back to Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children, which I finished yesterday while stricken with a Fall flu. One lingering question I had was, who would want to read about these New York intelligentsia, other than members of it? Time will tell. While she does't have Franzen's middle America hook, with the St. Louis family, Claire does a particularly good job writing about people distantly removed from the urban center. To some extent, her provincial women bummed out about their disappointing sons are her most poignant characters. Or maybe I'm just projecting. Anyhow, it'll be interesting to see how the book sells in Middle America.

In any case, Claire builds towards the novel's 9/11 climax beautifully. We feel the tension rising, knowing what's coming, anticipating the transvaluation of all anxieties, relishing the ambiguities and complexities which will soon be flattened out by the momentous event. And yet, when it does come, it's somewhat disappointing. It's as if 9/11, in its firefighterly and dusty horror, by now undoubtedly the most narrated event in history, does not yield to the fine filigree of her prose. What you've watched a thousand times on TV and heard told like a cubist Rashomon from hundreds of points of view doesn't need embellishment.

And yet, I ate the novel whole, and look forward to the next. Claire's first book was good, and she gets better with each.