The distinctive genre of 9/11 literature about children

Shalagina Ol'ga Vadimovna ORCID: 0000-0001-8110-8117 Graduate student, Department of Foreign Literature, Kazan Federal University 420056, Russia, Republic of Tatarstan, Kazan, Tatarstan str., 2 olga.shalagina@gmail.com

The terrorist attack on the Twin Towers, committed in New York on September 11, 2001, marked the beginning of the formation of a new thematic group of works of art under the general terminological designation - literature of 9/11. Within the framework of the stratum of American fiction, which represents the understanding of this tragedy in the form of literary creativity, a separate subgroup of works is distinguished, the main characters of which are children and adolescents. The study of modern American literature as an example of modern art within the framework of an actual cultural paradigm, especially such a subgroup of works that has not been subjected to comparative analysis so far, seems relevant and significant for domestic American studies.

The scientific novelty of this study lies in the fact that the identification of common genre features of 9/11 literature about children and adolescents is being undertaken for the first time in Russian literary criticism. The theoretical significance of the study lies in deepening scientific knowledge on the problem of the genre originality of American literature on 9/11 about children as an example of a group of works representing the post-traumatic narrative of the XXI century. The practical significance of the research is determined by the possibility of using the results in the practice of teaching general and special courses in modern American literature. The theoretical basis of the research was the works of literary critics and cultural scientists, whose scientific activity is devoted to the genre features of literature about and for children, as well as the theoretical development of the genre of the novel of upbringing and the novel of initiation: V. Ya. Propa ^[6], N. S. Shalimova ^[9]; ^[10]; ^[11], A. S. Odysheva ^[3], A. N. Osokina ^[4] and others.

The research material consists of a corpus of 9/11 novels about children and adolescents published in the period 2003-2019, most of which have no translation into Russian. It includes: "The Usual Rules"^[1] (The Usual Rules, 2003) by Joyce Maynard, "Dear Zoe" (Dear Zoe, 2004) by Philip Beard, "Terribly Loud and Incredibly Close" (Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, 2005) by Jonathan Foer, "Falling" (The Falling Man, 2007) Dona Delillo, "The Goldfinch" (The Goldfinch, 2013) Donna Tartt, "The Memory of Things" (The Memory of Things, 2016) Gay Polisner, "All We Have Left" (All We Have Left, 2016) Wendy Mills, "Hope and Other Punchlines" (Hope and Other Punchlines, 2019) Julie Baxbaum. The research uses cultural-historical and comparative-typological methods with elements of structural analysis.

The 9/11 novels about children reveal the features of the novel of upbringing in its most modern form — the form of the novel of initiation, voluminously described by N. S. Shalimova ^[9]; ^[10]; ^[11]. On the one hand, the literature of 9/11 continues the tradition of the novel of upbringing, revealing the thorny path of the formation of heroes. On the other hand, if in the classic novel of upbringing the fate of the hero is traced for a long time, then in the works of literature 9/11 trauma significantly accelerates the process of growing up of the hero. Moreover, the subgenre of the initiation novel is complemented here by elements of other genres: detective and romance novels. So, being the heiress of the parenting novel, 9/11 literature opens a new stage of literature about childhood trauma.

The plot of the 9/11 novels about children is based on the process of rebirth and moral development, which was initiated by trauma. The trauma of loss becomes the main catalyst for the plot. The loss of a significant loved one pushes the child hero to search for him in one form or another - sometimes in the form of a direct search for the missing, if the hero does not believe in the death of a parent ("Hope and other punchlines"), sometimes in the form of a detective investigation into the circumstances of the death of a certain person ("Terribly loud and extremely close", "That's all we have left"). Being injured, the child hero loses his former qualities correlated with childhood, and embarks on the path of adulthood, which is usually characterized by a lack of adult care. Separated from the parents, the child ceases to be an object and becomes a subject, an actor of action.

The motif of orphanhood is of particular relevance in the literature of 9/11. According to A. S. Odysheva, "entry into the Magical Land with parents is prohibited" ^{[3, p. 216]}. Thus, in the works of Charles Dickens, M. Twain, F. Baum, J. Barry, C. Lewis, and others, child characters lose touch with their parents for various reasons. They find themselves either in the care of adult substitute parents (guardians, nannies, teachers), with whom trusting relationships are not built firmly enough, or they are completely left to themselves. It is away from parental care and guardianship that children's adventures in literary works usually begin. Moreover, often the goal of the child, which he pursues, overcoming fears, dangers and trials, is to reconnect with his parents, return home.

In the literature of 9/11, the motif of orphanhood sometimes becomes even more acute than in the classic works of English-language literature of the XIX century. The motive of the emotional breakup of the child hero with his parents is also more clearly traced. After the tragic death of their mothers, the heroes of the novels by J. Maynard "Ordinary Rules" and D. Tartt "Goldfinch" will have to move to fathers with whom the children have never been close, and rapidly grow up. As in the traditional initiation rites described by V. Propp ^[6], in the process of working through the trauma of loss, the characters acquire "helpers", older comrades who accompany the child on the difficult path of experiencing loss: in Foer's novel, this is Thomas Shell, the boy's grandfather and neighbor, in Polisner's novel Uncle Matt, etc.

Some young heroes of 9/11 literature lose their parents as a result of a terrorist attack ("Ordinary Rules", "Goldfinch"), others lose their emotional connection with them as a result of traumatized parents, silencing common grief, temporary absence of adults ("Dear Zoey", "Terribly loud and extremely close", "Falling", "Everything what's left for us"). The trauma of loss and loneliness pushes teenagers to abandon their studies, socialize with marginal peers, commit petty crimes, experiment with drugs and eventually escape from home. In their works, which are closest to the classical form of the realistic novel of upbringing, J. Maynard and D. Tartt describe in detail the world of a child who has lost his family and the thorny path of growing up.

"Then in Amsterdam, for the first time in many years, I dreamed of my mother" ^{[7, p. 1]}, — this is how D. Tartt's novel begins. The main character, Theodore Decker, who has grown up, dreams of his mother during the most difficult period of his youth, when his whole life is going downhill: "... on the most terrible night, I saw my mother in a dream: a quick, mysterious vision, as if a visit from the other world" ^{[7, pp. 11-13]}. Theodore Decker is orphaned as a teenager. At the beginning of the work, the main character is thirteen years old. His mother is killed in a terrorist attack at the museum. With the death of his mother, Theo loses his childhood ("a circle of sunlight, a vivid picture of everyday ordinary happiness that I lost with her" ^{[7, p. 14]}) and the chance for a prosperous youth ("having lost her, I lost every landmark that could lead me to some happier, a more crowded, more normal life" ^{[7, p. 13]}). Theo's mental trauma, loss of support in the form of a reliable adult, lack of parental control and protection lead a teenager to alcohol and drugs: "restlessness, wandering, nothing to cling to" ^{[7, p. 324]}.

Many years after my mother's death, the main character is still in the process of experiencing loss and grieving the loss of the closest person. Theo's whole life revolves around the search for his mother, who, one day, went to another exhibition hall of the museum, on a rainy April evening, never returned home. The boy finds his mother only after growing up and having traveled a long way for many years, in Amsterdam, in a mirror, in a dream, on the eve of a suicide attempt.

The fate of the heroine of J. Maynard's novel "Ordinary Rules" is similar to the tragedy of Theodore Decker — on September 11, Wendy loses her mother. At the beginning of the story, Wendy lives in a family with stepfather Josh and half-brother Louis. The heroine's parents divorced when she was very young. After the death of her mother, Wendy does not want to move to her own father in California, it would be more comfortable for her to cope with grief in New York, together with her loved ones - with Josh and Louis. The girl hardly knows her father, and her stepfather and brother have become a real family for her. But Garrett threatens Wendy to ruin Josh in court for custody of her and convinces his daughter to agree to move to California. Wendy is not close to her own father: he does not even remember how old she is.

Tension in the relationship with parents reduces the quality of communication between adult heroes and child heroes. Communication is complicated by the widespread tendency to conceal details of the September 11, 2001 tragedy from children as potentially traumatic information, and the problem of verbal expression of traumatic experience. Adults' concealment of the facts about the death of people close to children, attempts to embellish, present information falsely and give unjustified hope expose child heroes to secondary traumatization: they inflict the trauma of ignorance. The American historian and cultural critic, theorist of trauma studies K. Karut explains obsessive fantasies and recurring nightmares about the trauma experienced by the "problem of non-knowledge". The questions to which the bearer of the injury does not find answers torment him with endless repetition ^[2].

Speaking about recreating the world of childhood in the works of 9/11, it should be noted that the intention of keeping secrets comes not only from adults in relation to children, but also vice versa. The children's subculture as a whole is characterized by a certain closeness. In it, "there is a desire to separate, to counteract the adult world, to keep the most important secret, to be unsupervised" ^{[5, pp. 404-405]}. Complicated communication with parents caused by a traumatic situation exacerbates this universal characteristic of the childhood world in the works of 9/11.

According to the plot of D. Delillo's novel "The Falling One", attempts by adults to hide information about the tragedy from children are met with an unexpected form of resistance from the children's community. From the scraps of information obtained, the children make up their own version of the events of September 11. And even the frank disclosure of facts by adults cannot convince them to abandon their own myth. Justin's mother initially tries to hide the terrible news from her son. Pensioners in the circle of patients with Alzheimer's disease, led by Justin's mother Lianna, argue that "children are not told the truth [about the terrorist attack]" ^{[1, p. 54]}. Lianna does not show her ten-year-old son the television news, but still tells about what happened. Having received no proof of his mother's words, the boy is convinced that despite the crash of the planes, the towers did not collapse — this is a lie.

Justin's best friends Katie and Robert, whom everyone just calls Brother-and-Sister, live in a skyscraper ten blocks from his house. Three weeks after the terrorist attack, Isabel, the mother of Katie and Robert, suspects something is wrong and worries about the children: "they talk in their secret language and stand for a long time at the window in Katie's room, closing the door." Despite Isabelle's fears, Lianna sees nothing wrong with the fact that "three children, gathered together, behave like children" ^{[1, pp. 15-16]}. Soon, Isabelle tells Lianna that Justin brings binoculars to meetings with friends, but she continues to wave off the puzzled friend, suggesting that her son is interested in bird watching. Lianna assumes that Justin is constantly looking at the sky because he is interested in weather phenomena, because they are just passing clouds at school. "Binoculars are part of this silencing syndrome that children have become addicted to," Isabelle assures Lianna ^{[1, p. 32]}.

Both mothers know that children tend to keep secrets from adults: "our children have their own worlds, huge, shining, where parents are not allowed" ^{[1, p. 32]}. However, an alarmed Lianna still makes attempts to ask her son about the secret that he keeps with his Brother and Sister, about binoculars and about Bill Aden. But Justin does not want to share his secret with his mother, he refuses to answer her questions and calmly denies that he took his father's binoculars. The children hide their guesses from their parents and "flatly refuse to talk about this topic," but Robert and Katie's mother overhears them repeating the mysterious name of an unknown person — Bill Aden. "This is what happens when we protect children from the news," complains Lianna. — When we keep children away from the perpetrators of mass murders" ^{[1, p. 64]}.

The characters of F. Beard's novels "Dear Zoey" and J. Foer's "Terribly Loud and Extremely Close" are also experiencing the trauma of ignorance. After the death of the younger sister of the heroine of "Dear Zoey", Tess and Emily do not receive psychological support from their parents, since the mother and her husband themselves cannot recover after Zoey's death. Children have to cope with their experiences alone. Tess feels as if her parents have excluded her from the general grief, so she moves out of their house to her own father. Tess's mom metaphorically describes their family after Zoey's death as parts of one whole, flying apart, as if something exploded between them and scattered them apart ^[12].

Oscar from the novel "Terribly loud and extremely Close" knows that his father is missing, and his mother and grandmother buried an empty coffin in the cemetery. Mom assures me that Dad's spirit is in the coffin, but Oscar demands the truth. As a result, Oscar keeps his investigation into the details of his father's death a secret: "When I went to search for the castle, I became a little easier because I was getting closer to dad. But it's also a little harder, because I felt like I was moving away from my mother" ^{[8, p. 31]}. Here we see that the key element of the plot — the personal transformation and maturation of the hero caused by the trauma of losing a loved one — is realized in the form of a process of investigating the circumstances of the death of a missing parent.

It should be noted that sometimes the process of growing up of a character in the literature of 9/11 illustrates the motive of travel, paths — in a literal and symbolic sense. In the novel "Ordinary Rules", the road as a process of growing up and post-traumatic recovery is described in the final part of the work. Wendy returns to New York from California across the country: the train goes through the dried golden deserts and mountains of Colorado, cold Nebraska, endless Iowa. "All this is a part of life, right?" says Wendy hitchhiker ^{[14, p. 376]}. After going through numerous trials and going through a lot of pain after the death of her mother, Wendy finally returns home.

Loneliness, coldness in child-parent relations, lack of support and an authoritative adult, the trauma of loss immerse the young heroes of the works of 9/11 in a state of searching for new landmarks. And if in the novel "Falling", the main idea of which is the fundamental insurmountability of trauma, the problem caused by parental detachment is indicated, but not solved, other authors of 9/11 allow their characters to go through the path of suffering, mistakes and trials in order to establish child-parent relations in the final. The denouement of 9/11 works about children is usually indicated by the definition of a new hero status in a relationship with a significant adult or the discovery of a symbolic inner support.

Thus, such elements of the novel of upbringing as the process of becoming a hero in the main plot focus, the hero's exit from the original environment and his return to a new status are preserved in the literature of 9/11. However, the temporality and the main incentive for the development of action are modified. Unlike the classic parenting novel, which traditionally covers a long period of the hero's life, 9/11 literature often describes only a short—term, critical period — from several years ("The Goldfinch") to one day ("Eleven" (2014) by Tom Rogers) - which rapidly changes the hero, which is generally characteristic for the modern subgenre of the parenting novel, the initiation novel. The plot trigger in the literature of 9/11 is the terrorist act and the loss or traumatization of a loved one, which is due to the thematic feature of this body of works.

A. N. Osokin, relying on L. Konstantina, calls the post-ironic novel of upbringing the most vivid form of realization of today's auto-fix ^{[4, p. 14]}. Writers of the 21st century are less likely to ridicule the naivety of their characters and more often describe their journey in search of an ideal with sympathy and respect.

It is on the search process that the plot of most of the 9/11 novels we have studied is based. In the American literature of 9/11, a new genre type of detective story can be distinguished — a specific quest in which the study of the famous terrorist attack unfolds. Everyone knows who committed the crime, but in each individual case, an investigation is underway into exactly how — and whether — this or that individual died. The disclosure of the mystery becomes an initiation test, it contributes to the elaboration of the traumatic experience of the hero and leads to the denouement of the plot. After going through the stages of post-traumatic experiences, the child hero absorbs the traumatic experience, undergoes personality formation and appears in a new capacity.

The tendency to conceal information about the tragedy of September 11, 2001 when communicating with children is described in many works by American writers. Already in the first novels on the subject of grief experienced by a child hero, the practice of hiding potentially traumatic facts is presented as an obstacle to the elaboration of traumatic experience. The communication gap that is growing between adults and children after the shocking tragedy strengthens the universal closeness of children's communities and pushes children to their own investigations in search of the truth. The later works of 9/11 demonstrate the positive effect of revealing the "mystery" of September 11, 2001 to children and the therapeutic properties of frank communication on the painful topic of loss.

A year after the tragedy, the hero of J. Foer's novel "Terribly Loud and Extremely Close" Oscar Schell finds a mysterious key in his father's closet in an envelope signed "Black". The boy finds out that the word on the envelope means someone's last name, and embarks on a journey through New York to find the one among all the Blacks in the city who will explain the purpose of the key in dad's closet.

For fifteen long years, the family of the heroine of V. Mills's novel "All that Remains to Us" cannot recover from the loss of their eldest son Travis during a terrorist attack. They don't talk about Travis. An obituary with a photo from his graduation album is printed in the local newspaper every year on the anniversary of 9/11. To this day, no one knows why Travis ended up in the WTC building on the day of the terrorist attack. It seems to Jessie that by answering the question of exactly how her brother died, she finds out that she is destroying the family today. The girl is sure that revealing a family secret will change a lot: "This is of great importance" ^{[15, p. 239]}. Jesse finds a scrapbook hidden in the barn with newspaper clippings about his brother's death, and then an old answering machine on which Travis's message is recorded, which he left to his parents on September 11. Searching for information about the past and meeting with a witness to the death of her brother helps Jessie and her family to embark on the path of working through the trauma.

In G. Polisner's novel "The Memory of Things", the main character Kyle begins an investigation in order to identify the girl whom he saves from suicide on the Brooklyn Bridge on September 11. As a result of the traumatic shock, the girl does not remember her name or hides it so as not to return home. Kyle suggests that she suffers from a special type of amnesia — dissociative fugue. The writer draws a parallel between the hero's communication with the found girl and the koan from Salinger's story "The banana fish is well caught" (A perfect D ay for Bananafish, 1948). Kyle undertakes various ways to regain his memory and reveal the identity of a new friend: he searches for mentions of her school and her parents on the Internet, teaches the girl exercises to train fast memory, takes her on a trip around New York in search of familiar places and even subjects her to a hypnotic session. After some time in a safe environment and communicating with Kyle, fragments of memories return to the girl ^[16].

To get more information about the missing father, the hero of the novel J. Backsbaum "Hope and other punchlines" Noah pretends to do a school project for the anniversary of the terrorist attack and interviews all the characters in the photo of Baby Hope. Each hero of the photo has his own strategy for experiencing trauma, it is expressed in a worldview position that the hero transmits to the guys when they meet. Visiting all the heroes of the photo, Noah and Abby seem to be collecting secrets that will help them come to terms with the loss of a loved one and the fear of their own death, or, conversely, prevent the successful processing of trauma.

Like climbing the stairs, the interview of the heroes of the photo, one by one, brings Noah closer to revealing the truth about his father's death. The truth starts the denouement of the novel and brings the characters closer to a happy ending: Noah gets closer to his mother and stepfather, the mother reveals to Noah the secret she keeps and shares many stories about the boy's dead father, Abby goes to the hospital with a coughing fit, this forces her to tell her parents about the painful symptoms that the girl associates with the "9/11 syndrome", and to start treatment, and Abby's divorced parents admit to their daughter that they are thinking of living together again.

The uncertainty, evasiveness of adults, lies and mystery that children face in the process of experiencing the consequences of the 9/11 tragedy lead them to the intention to start their own investigation. "It turns out that I am the hero of the longest joke of all time. I just turned the punchline backwards" ^{[13, p. 217]}, — this is how Noah thinks that his mother knew the details of his father's death, but did not tell them to him, even though for many years the boy vainly hoped that his father was alive.

The tradition of the American story about the detective child has its roots in the mass American literature of the XX century. However, a child investigating the mystery of the death of a loved one as a result of a terrorist attack differs from his literary predecessor. He is in a state of deep grief, suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, his image is revealed more realistically, with great psychologism and sincerity. And although in the 21st century American authors often do not allow a child detective to complete an investigation with the expected result, thereby raising the problem of post-truth and the fundamental absence of truth as such, the process of solving riddles, searching for clues and approaching the truth has a therapeutic effect on the child hero.

According to the plot of the novel, Oscar and his father play a "Reconnaissance expedition" on weekends until September 11. The last expedition with a map of Central Park, during which his father teaches Oscar that phenomena can be aimless and meaningless, does not have time to complete. After his father's death, Oscar, even being, by his own admission, an atheist, cannot agree with the idea of the meaninglessness of existence, he wants everything in the world to have a purpose. Every day, going on a detective journey through New York in search of a lock that opens with a key from his father's envelope, Oscar comes across a lack of meaning, but stubbornly continues to search for it. The boy cannot accept that human life means so little compared to the existence of the universe. In reality, Oscar is trying to make sense of his dad's death. For a child, the idea that Dad has become a senseless victim of a terrorist attack is unbearable. But when the therapist asks him directly if there could be any benefit in his father's death, Oscar goes berserk.

The detective line of the 9/11 works is complemented by the motive of travel, or rather, visiting certain points on the map in the form of a quest. The search for witnesses and evidence forces children to make their first independent trips around the city or even across the country. The journey can be both part of the investigation ("Terribly loud and extremely close", "Memory of Things", "Hope and other punchlines"), and an independent plot element symbolizing the difficult path of growing up a child in the process of trauma therapy ("The Usual Rules").

The detective element is often complemented by the heroism motif, which has always been present in children's detective stories and adventure novels about children. Already in classic American detective stories about young detectives, the image of a child even acquires a superhero character. The story of Aliya Susanto, the heroine of the novel by V. Mills, is also noted as a motive for superheroism. A terrorist attack catches a girl in the south tower of the WTC, and this tragic shock strengthens Aliya's faith. Like the heroine of comic books, which Aliya is fond of drawing, she fearlessly rushes upstairs to save her father. At first, Aliya does not take the hijab off her head, even to use it as a wet smoke mask, because it helps her feel bolder and stronger. The headscarf as a symbol of faith helps Aliya to gain courage in the first minutes of the tragedy, but then she realizes that people do not wear faith and courage on themselves like a suit — these qualities come from within. Aliya nevertheless takes off her hijab for the sake of saving her neighbor: she gives a handkerchief to a suffocating Travis to protect him from dust and soot. At a critical moment, Alia realizes that the real superheroine lives inside her. It should be noted that the courage and dedication of the heroine does not work a miracle: Travis dies under the rubble of the South Tower. So, Wendy Mills creates a realistic metamodern novel based on a true historical event, weaving into it romantic motives of heroism realized in the image of Aliyah.

In the novels of G. Polisner, V. Mills and J. Baxbaum, the motive of the first teenage love also arises. The exciting anticipation of the beginning of a romantic relationship, in which the characters stay, contributes to the therapy of trauma, and finding happiness in love at the end of the novels serves as proof of passing the initiation test. According to V. Ya. Propa, love or marriage are the traditional reward for the hero for passing the initiation rite ^[6]. For example, in G. Polisner's work, sixteen-year-old Kyle Donohue meets a girl in a bird costume with huge feathered wings behind her back at the railing of the Brooklyn Bridge on September 11, which complements the portrait of the heroine with angelic features, who may be about to jump off the bridge. The stranger suffers from traumatic memory loss, and Kyle bravely goes in search of her memories and former identity. Submitting to the first romantic attraction, next to a stranger, Kyle forgets about tragic events.

Thus, the genre specificity of the 9/11 novels about children is hybridization: the form of the initiation novel, based on the stadial development of a personality overcoming obstacles on the path of growing up, launched by the traumatic experience of loss, is complemented by the features of a detective and love novel with motives of travel and heroism. The interrelation of the motives of search and travel, symbolizing the process of personal development of the characters, significantly affects the genre originality of the works of 9/11 and sets a new form of detective — quest. Love motives within the framework of the initiation novel genre are also associated with the process of becoming a hero's personality, in which love acts as a confirmation of overcoming trials.

^[1] Here and further, the translation of unpublished Russian texts, works and works of our — O.Sh.