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

2 9 7
T h u r s c h w e l l
•
W r i t i n g a n d T e r r o r
Brita, who is able, miraculously, to participate as witness, but it is also
what allows Bill Gray to “write towards” the hostage he has never met, to
imaginatively identify with him and enter his world in the face of his own
and the hostage ’s imminent deaths. Indeed, as I have tried to suggest
above, the possibility of this “original joy” is inseparable from the possi-
bility of an original mourning, the loving acceptance of the mortality
inscribed not only in our physical selves but in our language as well. 
Don DeLillo’s post-

/

essay also ends with an affirmation of mourning
and imaginative identification with one ’s other, and the potential for com-
munity that they offer. I will let his last words be mine as well:
I looked at her [a Muslim woman praying on Canal Street] and it was clearer
to me than ever, the daily sweeping taken-for-granted greatness of New
York. The city will accommodate every language, ritual, belief and opinion.
In the rolls of the dead of September 

, all these vital differences were surren-
dered to the impact and flash. The bodies themselves are missing in large
numbers. For the survivors, more grief. But the dead are their own nation and
race, one identity, young or old, devout or unbelieving—a union of souls.
During the hadj, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca, the faithful must eliminate
every sign of status, income and nationality, the men wearing identical strips
of seamless white cloth, the women with covered heads, all recalling in prayer
their fellowship with the dead. 
Allahu akbar. God is great.
72
* Associate Professor, Cleveland State University, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law; Visiting Profes-
sor, American University, Washington College of Law. A version of this paper was presented at the
symposium “The New Exceptionalism: Law and Literature Since 

/

” held at Benjamin N. Cardozo
School of Law in New York City on October 

, 

. 
.
Maurice Blanchot, “Literature and the Right to Death,” in 
The Work of Fire
, Lydia Davis, trans. (Palo
Alto: Stanford University Press, 

), 

.
.
DeLillo, 
Mao II
(New York: Viking, 

), 

. 
.
DeLillo, 
The Body Artist
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 

), 

.
.
In his post-September 

essay on the events of that day for 
Harpers
, DeLillo elaborates on the symbol-
ism of the towers in a manner that is entirely consistent with their use in his fiction: “The World Trade
towers were not only an emblem of advanced technology but a justification, in a sense, for technology’s
irresistible will to realize in solid form whatever becomes theoretically allowable. Once defined, every
limit must be reached.” “In the Ruins of the Future,” 
Harpers, 
December 

, 

–

, reprinted in
LAL1902_07.fm Page 297 Thursday, May 24, 2007 12:21 PM

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