Word: kalfus
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Disorder Peculiar to the Country By Ken Kalfus Ecco...
...fights echoes a similar desire to watch the 9/11 footage over and over again. On the day of the attacks, when the smoking towers were glowing in every TV set, two people were deriving the utmost pleasure out of the possibility of each other’s demise. Kalfus suggests that such seething schadenfreude, while repulsive, is inescapably American...
...memories of 9/11 give way to anthrax scares—a prankster targets Joyce’s office with an envelope filled with talc, and she suspects that it could be Marshall—the bombing of Afghanistan, renewed surges of terrorism in Israel, and the invasion of Iraq. Kalfus portrays post-bellum reality as few other 9/11 artistes have, showing how the attacks have faded into the background radiation of our country’s life, occasionally surfacing sharply in phrases like “suicide bomb” and “Orange Alert...
Toward the end of the novel, Kalfus fictionalizes real world events and departs for global Candyland. All of a sudden, the War on Terror is actually working. Iraq embraces democracy. Syria follows, sans invasion. Marshall and Joyce’s two children, along with children across the globe, wear t-shirts with Saddam’s dead silhouette that read “Death to Terrorists!” As one of Marshall’s co-workers puts it, “Bush is a Bible Belt moron who can’t put together a coherent sentence...
This post-terror world Kalfus portrays is encouraging, but sadly impossible. This perfunctory meditation upon the fragility of national security isn’t explored until the last chapter, giving the novel a sour, discordant aftertaste...