Article in Law and Literature · July 2007 doi: 10. 1525/lal

2 9 4
L a w & L i t e r a t u r e
•
Vo l u m e 1 9 , N u m b e r 2
a Maoist group has taken a young Swiss United Nations worker, who is also
a poet, hostage in Beirut. Bill agrees to participate in a media event in Lon-
don organized by Everson at the demand of the Maoist group to publicize
their cause as a condition for releasing the hostage. The event never occurs
(bombings prevent it from taking place), but while in London Bill meets
with a representative of the terrorists, George Haddad, who convinces him
to come to Athens with him where they can work together to obtain the hos-
tage ’s release. Bill agrees, and in Athens, now cut off entirely from his last
remaining friends and supports, he decides after conversations with Haddad
to go to Beirut and seek to substitute himself for the younger writer. Before
he makes it there, however, he is hit by a car, and, declining to seek treat-
ment for his internal injuries, he eventually dies, entirely anonymous and
alone, on the ferry from Cyprus to Beirut. An old man finds his body in the
bunk and removes his passport and other identification, “which he could sell
to some militia in Beirut.”
64
It is difficult to imagine a story better designed
to convey the writer’s impotence in the face of the “world narratives” of
capitalism and terror. 
Nevertheless, there is more to this novel than its plot. In concluding,
I will focus on three sections that, it seems to me, provide an alternative
reading without, however, directly negating the conventional reading
that I’ve just outlined. 
Halfway through the novel, its narrative is interrupted by a brief section that
enters the hostage’s cell and mind, describing his fleeting thoughts and percep-
tions as he attempts to maintain his sanity under excruciating conditions.
Although the rest of the novel shifts kaleidoscopically among the different char-
acters’ thoughts and experiences, this section stands out stylistically—it is com-
posed of shorter paragraphs and sentences than the rest—and in terms of its
point of view, which although couched in the third person remains entirely
with the immediate subjective experiences of the hostage.
65
It is also unique
in that the novel never returns to his point of view, as it does for all of the
other characters. The already curious status of this passage becomes more
ambiguous when, late in the novel, as Bill is about to embark on his final
fatal journey to Beirut, he finds himself writing about the hostage, “letting
the words lead him into that basement room.” “Find the places where you
converge with him,” Bill tells himself. “See his face and hands in words.”
66
In Peter Boxall’s felicitous phrase, Bill “writes towards the hostage.”
67
An
(unanswerable) question thus posed by this “writing” is whether the earlier
LAL1902_07.fm Page 294 Thursday, May 24, 2007 12:21 PM

---