Book review: The Submission, by Amy Waldman

The relevance of the novel in the contemporary American cultural dialogue has been the subject of much debate recently, and much ink has been spilled about whether fiction writers should respond in real time to national events or follow their own creative calendar.

Amy Waldman's debut novel, The Submission, set two years after 9/11, enters this debate with a finely wrought meditation on the politics of recovery, and one that will stick like a fishbone in the throat of those who believe the color line has disappeared from American life and politics.

The titular submission concerns an anonymous architectural competition held to build a memorial at Ground Zero. Two years after the attacks, the novel opens as the jurors - a mix of politicians, art historians, scholars and Claire Burwell, whose husband was killed while working in the World Trade Center - are reaching the end of their heated debate, and attempting to choose between two submissions.

The winner, it turns out, is Mohammad Khan - a controversial result, to say the least. Bob Wilner, representing the state governor, sums up the jury's reaction best: "Jesus fucking Christ! It's a goddamn Muslim!" Thus begins the drama of The Submission, which finally traces the immutable circle of grief encompassing victims, politicians and widows, all of whom have been touched in one way or another by the dust clouds emitted from the fallen buildings.

For a first novel, The Submission is remarkable. Waldman has created a cast of characters and a situation that fully embraces and subtly investigates the sociology and politics of America's mourning process following the events of 9/11, a process that, as one character remarks late in the book, includes the bungled attempt to create a democratic memorial to the victims.

The greatest strength of The Submission is its character orchestration and the way it manages to unearth uneasy truths through a collective of individuals - from politicians to Bangladeshi illegal aliens - rather than through a single protagonist. It is thus a quintessentially American novel in the sense of America the melting pot.

Several Anglophone novelists have responded to 9/11 over the past decade: Don DeLillo, Salman Rushdie, Jonathan Safran Foer, John Updike and Ian McEwan among them. The profusion of novels dealing with 9/11 is no surprise; it was after all the most significant national tragedy in America's history and as such is prone to lengthy meditation. Sometimes we forget that novelists are people too, embedded within their culture and subject to the same griefs and confusions as everyone else.

But what these previous novels gained in immediacy they lacked in the self-reflection that only time can provide. What makes Waldman's novel different from the majority of these earlier attempts is that The Submission does not chart the events of Sept. 11, 2001, nor a single individual's response to it, but the long-term cultural aftermath of that day.

The ending of the novel strikes a false note, however, as Waldman fast-forwards two decades to show how those involved in the controversy have moved on with their lives, some for better, some for worse.

This portion of the novel feels contrived and veers in a personal rather than public direction, thus shirking its original power and scope. If the majority of The Submission has the reader appreciative of Waldman's power to grab the zeitgeist by the headscarf, the concluding pages remind us irrevocably that this is, finally, an American novel timed to be published on the 10th anniversary of the attacks - a marketing ploy if there ever was one - rather than a work of pure art.

Novels are not protest songs: They take years to craft and edit. But it is not only the fact that The Submission is well-considered that makes it, despite its faults, American fiction's finest response to the events of 9/11.

Waldman is concerned with how that event has implanted itself into our national consciousness and how, even among those who consider themselves liberal-minded, our emotions and racial responses are embedded within our consciences in ways we cannot fully understand until we are forced to stare them down, as are the jury members and the public involved in the memorial selection process.

At rare moments, a writer steps into the fray of national tragedy and emerges with a novel that all can recognize as both a reflection on that tragedy and a response to it, but also a cohesive work of art. More often, writers, even great ones, falter under the pressure of being the national antennae. We need more novels like this one, well-considered and finely crafted, exemplifying the orchestrated meditation that is the novel's greatest trait.

The Submission may not close the book on 9/11, but it points the way to a more considered style of dealing with the tragedy, and that in itself is a significant step forward in the grieving process.

Stephan Delbos can be reached at
sdelbos@praguepost.com