Ghosts of Gotham: 9/11 mourning in Patrick McGrath’s Ghost Town and Michael Cunningham’s Specimen Days

Abstract

This article explores the manner in which Patrick McGrath’s Ghost Town: Tales of Manhattan Then and Now and Michael Cunningham’s Specimen Days have both responded to 9/11 through similar techniques of literary triptych that place different historical periods of New York, including the present, into complex relations of similarity, repetition and difference. The cumulative effect of the temporal juxtaposition and the centrality of absent figures within each story emphasize the difficulty and necessity of the twin tasks of mourning the dead and evoking and conserving hope for the city’s future.

Keywords:

• 9/11 fiction
• trauma
• Michael Cunningham
• Patrick McGrath

Notes

1. “A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress” (Benjamin 249).

2. “June 18th. – In one of the hospitals I find Thomas Haley, company M, 4th New York cavalry – a regular Irish boy, a fine specimen of youthful physical manliness – shot through the lungs – inevitably dying – came over to this country from Ireland to enlist – has not a single friend or acquaintance here – is sleeping soundly at this moment, (but it is the sleep of death) – has a bullet‐hole straight through the lung. I saw Tom when first brought here, three days since, and didn’t suppose he could live twelve hours – (yet he looks well enough in the face to a casual observer). He lies there with his frame exposed above the waist, all naked, for coolness, a fine built man, the tan not yet bleach’d from his cheeks and neck. It is useless to talk to him, as with his sad hurt, and the stimulants they give him, and the utter strangeness of every object, face, furniture, &c., the poor fellow, even when awake, is like some frighten’d, shy animal. Much of the time he sleeps, or half sleeps. (Sometimes I thought he knew more than he show’d). I often come and sit by him in perfect silence; he will breathe for ten minutes as softly and evenly as a young babe asleep. Poor youth, so handsome, athletic, with profuse beautiful shining hair. One time as I sat looking at him while he lay asleep, he suddenly, without the least start, awaken’d, open’d his eyes, gave me a long steady look, turning his face very slightly to gaze easier – one long, clear, silent look – a slight sigh – then turn’d back and went into his doze again. Little he knew, poor death‐stricken boy, the heart of the stranger that hover’d near” (Whitman 49–50).