There certainly are a lot of flags here. The first was the size of a place mat and waved from the taxi I took from JFK. The driver was Polish and said that “the thing” had made it hard for all foreigners. “I call it a thing,” he said, “because I don’t want to say the word for what it is. I won’t say his name neither because, to me, he has no name, he’s just a chickenshit motherfucker.” He said that at least Hitler had been a gentleman about things. He’d said he would start a war, and he did. “But the chickenshit, he didn’t give any warning at all. The motherfucker.”
I saw flags glued to bumpers and waving from car antennas, and then, when we arrived in the city, I saw them everywhere, mainly in the windows of businesses. Many of the flags are on posters saying either UNITED WE STAND or WE WON’T LET THEM BREAK OUR SPIRIT. Had I known nothing about the events of September 11, I probably would have thought it was some sort of holiday. On my own, though, I wouldn’t have noticed the missing World Trade Center. I walked south a few times but looked at the spot where it used to be only because it was no longer there. On my way downtown I walked through Union Square, but, except for a few signs and posters, the memorial shrines are gone. Mainly it just seems a lot quieter than usual. When someone is loud or overly joyful people stare for a moment, pursing their lips, and then they turn away.
October 18, 2001
New York
Yesterday’s cabdriver told me that anthrax had been piped through the air ducts at the White House and infected three hundred people. He said it with great authority, claiming to have heard it on the radio, but it turns out not to be true. The volume control is broken on my hotel television. I turned on CNN as soon as I got into the room and heard, along with everyone else on my floor, the newscaster screaming that thirty Washingtonians had been infected. She mentioned Tom Daschle’s office but said nothing about the White House. I’m finding it hard to get upset over anthrax. Yes, it’s bad, but I can’t help thinking it’s the work of an American nut. It’s not efficient enough to be a terrorist plot, unless, of course, the goal is simply to spread panic. I thought of watching the news before going to bed, but it was just too loud.
I’ve gotten spoiled so it put me in a very bad mood when Air France told me I would not be upgraded to business class on yesterday’s flight. Steven had arranged a transfer using my frequent-flyer miles, but according to the woman at the counter, the airline was “not making that today.” The plane was half full and I was on the aisle of an empty, four-seat middle section. Before takeoff, a French couple left their assigned places and took two of the ones on my row, leaving an empty space between us. Moments later, the true owner of the far aisle seat arrived, so the couple moved down, making ours the only full row on the entire plane. I was seething. Then the man in front of me reclined his seat and I was reduced to six inches of lap room. I couldn’t even read a magazine. The movie was Cats and Dogs, but I couldn’t bend forward to get my headphones, so I just sat there, hating the French.
Ronnie called last night to tell me I’d been a question on Jeopardy!, the answer being “He wrote the SantaLand Diaries.” I don’t know what the category was. She told me that a week after the bombing, members of her local chamber of commerce approached the businesses on her street, asking them to display a picture of the flag with the caption WE MOURN OUR VICTIMS. Ronnie agreed, and a few days later she was approached by the same people, who wanted her to display a sign reading HATE-FREE ZONE.
She said she’d rather not and they got angry at her, thus betraying the spirit of the sign they were asking her to hang in her window. “Everyone else is doing it,” they said. “You’ve got the flag in the window, so what’s your problem?”
The problem, she explained, was that it was just stupid. “Like, what,” she said, “some vengeful person is going to see the sign and say, ‘Whoops, I can’t buy shoes here. This is a hate-free zone’?”
If things truly worked that way, she’d hang up a sign reading SHOPLIFTING-FREE ZONE or IMPULSE-BUYING ZONE. The businesses on either side of her agreed to display the new signs and now regard Ronnie’s shoe store as a haven for the disgruntled.
October 19, 2001
New York
The flags are much larger uptown. On 5th Avenue they’re big enough to cover football fields. Walk down the street and you hear someone playing “The Star-Spangled Banner” on a trumpet, competing with the guy across the street who’s pounding out “America the Beautiful” on one of those Caribbean oil drums. What’s missing are the tourists who would normally stop to listen. It’s not exactly dead, but most of the people who are out and about seem to have business here. Shops are hurting, and when you enter a store the salesclerks fall all over you. Buying things you don’t want or need has become a patriotic duty, so I went to Barneys and got a tie.
October 20, 2001
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
Where do I start with Wilkes-Barre? My hotel is located on the town square, which is bedecked with hanging electric flags, these interspersed with regular cloth versions the size of beach towels. They hang from wires, lampposts, and a huge metal armature built to support the dozens of speakers used to broadcast a looped tape of patriotic songs and marches. I arrived to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” which was followed by “God Bless America,” “America the Beautiful,” and, strangely enough, “Dixie.” After these came a number of marches, including the song played when the president enters the room and something I recall hearing once on a coffee commercial. When finished, the tape returned to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” and started all over again. The hotel feels like an indoctrination center.
“Our mayor is crazy,” everyone says. “He’s completely lost his mind.” Wilkes-Barre is shut tight by six o’clock, but still the music blares, playing for an audience of no one.
October 23, 2001
Allentown, Pennsylvania
As part of yesterday’s program I met with students at the local college. Normally I try to get out of things like that, but I wound up having a good time, mainly, I think, because of the teacher, a bearded forty-eight-year-old named Alec. He met me at the airport and after the reading we joined a few of his colleagues for dinner. One of them was a papal scholar who told us that in the eighteenth century, the Catholic Church canonized a dog. Alec asked if that would be Saint Bernard and, though it was corny, I can’t remember the last time I laughed that hard.
October 31, 2001
Cincinnati, Ohio
On CNN I watched a discussion about post-9/11 America. One of the panelists was the editor of Good Housekeeping, who reflected our new seriousness by placing the Stars and Stripes atop the traditional gingerbread house gracing the December cover. This is the sort of bullshit CNN is becoming famous for. I looked at this woman, thinking, Just…get the fuck off my TV.