i’ve been an atheist as long as i can remember and my life, in part, has been a feigned attempt toward belief. i will never believe and know this, so i scramble toward god as a tightrope walker over a net of godlessness. the point, i guess, is to get as close as possible to something i know i’ll never reach; a more sophisticated (or not) form of a kid throwing a fit after having learned that santa claus is just some miserable minimum wage worker with a fake white beard and boozy breath. radical islam is particularly fascinating to me as it’s all about the endgame -- in the form, of course, of a global caliphate or orgying it up with a bunch of virgins. i remember when the nytimes printed the first pictures of the hijackers, i’d stare into the printed eyes of mohammad atta… he seemed pure evil, of course, but also imbued with some kind of secret. but that’s bullshit – a variation of the kuleshov effect. nonetheless, one wonders what it takes to be able to sit in a cockpit watching the towers grow larger and larger as you push that plane harder and harder, knowing you’re minutes, now seconds, now miliseconds, from being totally vaporized. the 9/11 hijackers are repellent, naturally, but in some kind of way one is almost enviably curious. to believe in something, anything, with such furious attachment, is attractive. i’m intensely curius about these people with such courage to die in the name of their cause. with these pure islamic warriors so critical of america’s excesses… who spent the night before their death at a strip club*.so i read all i could about the hijackers and bin laden and zawahiri and sayyid qtub (who is credited as the father of modern radical islam) to try and understand the world around me, but also to understand why and how these people came to believe so strongly in all this bullshit. and, of course, lots of this shit is political and historical and they stoke the fires of religion to keep the drums of war going… but lots of ‘em are true-blue nutball koran-thumping maniacs. paul berman wrote eloquently and with tremendous insight about sayyid qtub in his great book terror and liberalism. as did lawrence wright in, perhaps the best book on the subject, the looming tower. as did martin amis. and the shit is just weird. it’s weird with all these guys, but qtub seems the weirdest. and i’m pretty certain qtub gets the award for the single most self-loathing homosexual in the history of planet earth (and, who knows, maybe paradise). as with most religious zealots, qtub hated women. and his writings about his time in america (he went to college here) are fantastic! he writes in detail about american women’s sluttishness in dress and speech and action (this is the 1950s!). he recounts stories about big-breasted blondes coming on to him (um… okaaaay) and him being repulsed. and, of course, there are the stories about mohammad atta dressing in drag in order to go into an office and receive a grant or his leaving explicit instructions not to allow his mother to attend his funeral as a women would sully the scene. nice. anyway, all these stories are wildly fascinating. incredibly. with all that eros and thanos and suicide and repression and self-loathing homosexuality and just utter fucking strangeness, how could it not be? it seems that only hollywood could make that kinda shit boring. guess not. updike tells the story of ahmed ashmawy, half egyptian, half irish, growing up and radicalized by shaikh rashid in new jersey. and here’s the thing: the book is not as bad as they made it out to be. but in a way it’s worse. it’s just dull and incredibly unimaginative. and kind of pointless. it doesn't make sense as updike’s made a career of probing the american psyche and exploring the countless ways americans fill that god-shaped hole. he’s written good and great books about people so desperate for existential recognition they sell it all and move to an ashram, they attempt to use mathematics to prove the existence of god, they bury themselves in sex and bad behavior, they run away from their families, etc… look. my own lack of interest doesn’t permit me to further describe the character of ahmad (or the ridiculous plotting)... he really is that dull. and not as a person (i’m sure many suicide bombers are less fun that the keynote speaker at an insurance seminar), but as a character. he’s just there. and one doesn’t give a fuck or get anything other than hollow islamic platitudes that could’ve been picked up from a week’s worth of scouring american newsrags in the few months following 9/11. maybe it’s because updike fell out of touch with the world? perhaps he didn’t do the research (but his earlier novel the coup nailed a marxist islamic dictator pretty damn well)? or was he just burnt after so many decades of novel writing? or maybe the cancer that killed him two years later was hard at work. but in all of terrorist i found not one passage that spoke to the angst and existential panic that a radicalized terrorist must feel (or an interesting take on the lack thereof) that i find on nearly every page of a story or novel updike writes about boring new england middle-class schlubs. i guess updike finds transcendence in the mundane, yet creates something mundane out of the transcendent?* is this true? it sounds in line with the typical repressed (homo)sexuality and hypocracy of these wicked assholes, but if it’s true how come we haven’t seen candi and scarlet describing those lapdances to leslie stahl?
In 2006, the Don of American Literature was finally ready to address the events of 9/11. I recall that this was a time, for American artists, of numbness, of complete loss of hope and faith in the humanity we as artists struggle so tirelessly to portray, to express, to challenge, and to understand. As tons of debris were being hauled from World Trade Center Plaza, and the place was being dusted off and readied for a new era, so were America’s artists hauling out their own psychic detritus, in some cases examining it closely, and dusting off their souls and their artists’ tools and figuring out how to respond.For John Updike, arguably the most prolific great writer of the 20th century, and now into the 21st, that response was Terrorist, a novel that, despite its ominous title, is not a grand sweep over the most vile of cancers on modern humanity, but rather a small and personal tale of a single boy. And this might be the worst thing about this book, which is a great book: the title struck me in such a way that the book (did I mention that it is a truly great book?) sat on my shelf for years before I finally picked it up. Setting aside the fact that that fate befalls many of the books on my shelves, due to my slow reading pace, I regret that I didn’t pick up the book because it is not only a page-turner, it is also a thought-provoking work that challenges our American sensibilities while at the same time honoring them.In two parallel, intersecting narratives, Updike gives us America through the eyes of a jaded and aging Jewish-American high school guidance counselor, Jack Levy, and a devout and dogmatic Arab-American high school graduate, Ahmad Mulloy. The menacing drive of the story is Ahmad’s descent, under the sway of a charismatic Imam at the local mosque, into the life of a devoted jihadist, and ultimately a terrorist. Through Ahmad, who is largely an innocent despite his devotion to the Imam’s violent interpretations of the Quran, we get a perspective on the jihadist’s worldview that is well-informed and respectful of Islamic thought, but by no means sympathetic. This young character is, in many ways, similar to the typical American reader in that his understanding of Islam is just being formed, as is ours. Jack Levy, on the other hand, is the American Liberal in defeat, suffering the ravages of age as well as the ravages of the time, doing his best to find peace with the former and stand up in his own small way against the latter. Within the juxtaposition and intertwining of these two narratives, Updike exposes and mashes together even more competing and stereotype-shattering themes, and in so doing, shines a bright light on a dark world. We come away with not only a greater understanding of the drives that might lead a young Muslim to jihad, but also a new familiarity with our own society and the interplay between our aspirations as Americans and those of the terrorist. It is a book that helps us find within ourselves an understanding of what has happened, and to begin the process of moving on.
What do You think about Terrorist (2006)?
How is it that you read so much and somehow watch terrible reality TV? How is this accomplished?By the way, you just guaranteed that I'll never read Updike.
—Tim
Our book group read this last month, and I think I'm the only one who really liked it. Updike's writing is, as always, wonderful--great descriptions of his main characters, a 17-yr-old h.s. senior who is half-Irish and half-middle Eastern and who becomes a devout Muslim, his mother, a would-be artist, and his h.s. guidance counselor, 60+ and Jewish. The kid, of course, gets pulled into a terrorist cell, and . . . It occurred to me later that the title may be ironic--Karma, read it just for the wonderful picture of the burned-out guidance counselor--you will sooo recognize him!
—Katecoffman
Will he or won’t he? In this post-9/11 coming of age tale, Ahmad Mulloy-Ashmawy is a high school senior convinced that the culture in which he lives is completely unclean. Child of an Irish-American mother and a long-gone Egyptian father, he identifies with his Arabic side. By his own choice he began Islamic studies at age 11. Under the tutelage of a fundamentalist imam, he has dedicated his life to Islam, scorning the temptations of the flesh. Or is it a mask for his own insecurities? While exp
—Will Byrnes
