The New Yorker's 'Talk of the Town' - John Updike & Susan Sontag

In The Talk of the Town, the theme of the essays has to do with the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center that occurred on the fateful day of September 11th, 2001. Within The Talk of the Town, there are two separate essays, one written by John Updike and the other by Susan Sontag. Both essays are very well written and give excellent details about what was transpiring around the writers at the time. John and Susan do not share the same opinion on the matter of the attacks however, as is apparent in their writing.

In John Updike's essay, he discusses the sights and emotions that he was going through during this "horrendous event." He talks about how the whole thing seemed so unreal and how even those on the television portrayed the same feeling and that somehow this could all be reversed. This unfortunately was not the case however, and because of that we are forced to pick up the pieces of the awful event.  All in all, I really enjoyed this particular essay. Updike uses a lot of really well written analogies that bring out the sites and feelings that he was going through at the time of the crash. One such example of this would be when he describes the second tower "burst into ballooning flame." At first it seems as though the author is deeply moved and saddened by this catastrophe, but towards the end he says something that changes this view, "We have only the mundane duties of survivors - to pick up the pieces, to bury the dead, to make precautions, to go on living." This angered me greatly when I read this.  It seemed as though the author played this off as some insignificant event, part of our every day lives.

In Susan Sontag's essay, she expresses her feelings of anger and frustration towards the American government and its leaders. My first impression after reading her article was that she was extremely venomous and critical of the government. She made it sound as though, the people running our country were a bunch of inept psycho's who have no idea how to run a country. She blames leaders such as the President for what she implies as 'lying to the public' when he says that everything will be ok, when "It is not ok." I disagree with this statement, for the reason that as a President, it is his job to exude both confidence and optimism even when things are not. Thats not lying, thats good leadership in my opinion.