Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Spring 2025
Journal / Book Title
Studies in American Fiction
Abstract
Daniel Alarcon’s “Absence,” Claire Vaye Watkins’s “Rondine al Nido,” and Otessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation are American works of fiction that save their most substantive commentary on the 9/11 terror attacks for their final page, despite each text largely focusing on other matters. This gesture illustrates the works calling upon and questioning the gravitas afforded to the tragedy of September 11. Reviewing the reception history of 9/11 fiction and making comparisons to canonical 9/11 narratives, I argue that these texts complicate these canonical and criticial frameworks: they treat 9/11’s significance as a variable, rather than a constant.
DOI
10.1353/saf.2025.a984790
MSU Digital Commons Citation
Gonzalez, Jeffrey, "Falling Women and Empty Skies: Returning to 9/11 in Fiction by Daniel Alarcon, Claire Vaye Watkins, and Otessa Moshfegh" (2025). Department of English Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works. 124.
https://digitalcommons.montclair.edu/english-facpubs/124
Rights
©2025 Project Muse. This article has been made Open Access under Subscribe to Open (S2O) by Johns Hopkins University Press.
Published Citation
Gonzalez, Jeffrey. "Falling Women and Empty Skies: Returning to 9/11 in Fiction by Daniel Alarcon, Claire Vaye Watkins, and Ottessa Moshfegh." Studies in American Fiction, vol. 52 no. 1, 2025, p. 127-152.