Terrorist Infiltrations

摘要

Back in 1991, the novelist Don DeLillo told an interviewer that even before the Salman Rushdie fatwa, real-world political terror was starting to overshadow the work of novelists. "Today, the men [hey, it was 15 years ago] who shape and influence human consciousness are the terrorists." This is silly: in what golden age did novels ever affect "human consciousness" more significantly than acts of political violence? Although topical fiction is often thin and amateurishly reported, novelists still insist on writing books "ripped from today's headlines." So shouldn't the terrorist—the archenemy of all civilization, and the writer's evil twin—be an ideal literary character?