Book reviews: Let the Great World Spin
March 10, 2010
A few weeks ago, days before I left for one of my monthly trips to Chicago, Thomas expressed a new concern. “Daddy, I'm worried about the tall buildings in A-Chago.”
“What are you worried about?”
“I'm worried an airplane will crash into one while you are there.”
And so I found myself trying to explain September 11th to a 3 year-old. The subject is harder for me to talk about than I would have expected. I've never lived in New York. I don't have any friends who lived there at the time. No one in my family died. So why did the attack affect me so much? I'm really not sure. I was upset and angry on the day of the attacks, but that feeling faded. I first realized I had unresolved feelings still when I tried to watch the film United 93, about the plane which crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers tried to retake the cockpit from the terrorists. I only made it about 5 minutes in before I had to turn it off as I was becoming more distressed than the film warranted.
Perhaps it is because the terrorist attacks took place at such a pivotal time in my life. I had just graduated from college and married the previous Spring and it was my second day at my first adult job. I was a long way from my parents for the first time in my life. Perhaps the measures our country has taken since that day, which I knew at the time would be horrific, were worse than I feared. Whatever the reason, eight-and-a-half years later, I still have a hard time discussing or expressing my feelings about September 11th.
It is in this context that I share my admiration for Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin. Despite taking place a quarter century before 2001, it is nevertheless a book whose primary purpose is to explore the same psychic distress I feel about that day. Ostensibly, the novel covers the lives of several New Yorkers on the day in 1974 when acrobat Philippe Petit walked a tightrope strung between the two towers of the World Trade Center. McCann stated that he wanted to portray a time in the life of the towers that was opposite that of September 11th. All eyes in New York were fixed on those buildings, just as later, but not in fear. Instead they gazed with wonder and joy.
The novel's characters are diverse and interesting. A middle-aged mother who lost her son in Vietnam meets with other women in a kind of group therapy session. A pair of young artists is involved in a hit-and-run auto accident. An Irish Jesuit priest spends his days ministering to prostitutes. A group of phreakers from California places calls to random payphones to get first-hand information about the tightrope walker. As diverse as these strangers are, their lives intertwine unexpectedly on a single day in 1974. Each story presents a nugget of wisdom, pain, or insight while simultaneously preserving the central theme of parental love and heartache.
McCann's father was at work near the World Trade Center on September 11th. He made it home safely, but his shoes and clothing were covered in dust. McCann says that they destroyed the clothing, but kept the shoes untouched since his father credits those shoes with saving his life. This novel became his therapy, is need to find meaning and redemption for a terrible day in history. I can't say whether he found that for himself, but it did help me. I'm not sure I would have been able to explain what September 11th was like to Thomas before reading this novel.
I'd like to share one more image that I found particularly beautiful. The novel ends with the two young daughters of a dead prostitute being taken away for adoption and raised in a caring home. In an epilogue, we see one of these girls grown up, visiting New York again as an adult. She is strong, educated, beautiful, and confident, as is her sister. Symbolically, McCann rebuilds the tall, strong towers of the World Trade Center into two strong, black women. This redeems their mother and also expresses hope for the future of the city.