Writing in The New York Times in June 2003, less than two years after the events of September 11 shattered the complacency with which many Americans conducted their lives, the British critic Michael Pye lamented an unlikely casualty of the new era: the ability to occupy ourselves with a superficial novel while sitting in an airport lounge or drifting at 30,000 feet. With tanks now standing guard at London’s Heathrow Airport, what was once an ordinary plane trip had acquired “an element of thoroughly unwanted suspense.” The usual reading material, Pye argued, would no longer do. “We stand in need of something stronger now: the travel book you can read while making your way through this new, alarming world.”
The Canadian writer Emily St. John Mandel used these lines as an epigraph to her second novel, The Singer’s Gun (2010), a book haunted by 9/11. But her entire body of work—her new novel, The Glass Hotel, is her fifth—can be read as a response to Pye’s demand. Mandel’s deeply imagined, philosophically profound reckonings with life in an age of disaster would indeed be appropriate companions alongside a plastic cup of wine and a tray of reheated food (if we’re lucky). But they are equally welcome at home during anxious days of following the news cycle or insomniac nights of worrying about the future. “You can make an argument that the world’s become more bleak, but I feel like we always think we’re living at the end of the world,” Mandel said in a recent interview at the University of Central Florida. “When have we ever felt like it wasn’t going to be catastrophic?”
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the {{IssueName}} edition of {{MagazineName}}.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
A Brief History of Yuval Noah Harari - How the scholar became Silicon Valley's favorite guru
"About 14 billion years ago, matter, energy, time and space came into being." So begins Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011), by the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, and so began one of the 21st century's most astonishing academic careers. Sapiens has sold more than 25 million copies in various languages. Since then, Harari has published several other books, which have also sold millions. He now employs some 15 people to organize his affairs and promote his ideas.
Boat Fish Don't Count
The wild, obsessive, dangerous pursuit of Montauk's biggest striped bass
The Anti-Rock Star
Leonard Cohen's battle against shameless male egoism
Rachel Kushner's Surprising Swerve
She and her narrators have always relied on swagger-but not this time.
Men on Trips Eating Food
Why TV is full of late-career Hollywood guys at restaurants
You Think You're So Heterodox
Joe Rogan has turned Austin into a haven for manosphere influencers, just-asking-questions tech bros, and other \"free thinkers\" who happen to all think alike.
What Abortion Bans Do to Doctors
In Idaho and other states, draconian laws are forcing physicians to ignore their training and put patients' lives at risk.
THE LOYALIST KASH PATEL WILL DO EXACTLY WHAT TRUMP WANTS.
A 40-year-old lawyer with little government experience, he joined the administration in 2019 and rose rapidly. Each new title set off new alarms.
THE RADICAL CONVERSION OF MIKE LEE
IN 2016, HE TRIED TO STOP TRUMP FROM BECOMING PRESIDENT. BY 2020, HE WAS TRYING TO HELP TRUMP OVERTURN THE ELECTION. NOW HE COULD BECOME TRUMP'S ATTORNEY GENERAL.
HYPOCRISY, SPINELESSNESS, AND THE TRIUMPH OF DONALD TRUMP
He said Republican politicians would be easy to break. He was right.