The terrorist bombings and the literature of rejection

November 19, 2015

If you’re a reader of this blog, then you know that one of its motifs – which also occurs in my forthcoming novel, “The Penalty for Holding” – is what I call “the literature of rejection,” that is the disproportionate rage at rejection found among certain antiheroes in literature and among assassins, mass murderers and terrorists.

I was reminded of this – or rather, my sharp-as-a-tack blog administrator reminded me of it – in reading an interview with Arie Kruglanski, co-director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), founded in 2005 at the University of Maryland with funds from the Department of Homeland Security.

Kruglanski has walked the walk. He was born in Nazi-occupied Poland and spent 15 years teaching psychology at Tel Aviv University. In this interview he echoes 19th-century psychologist-philosopher William James’ view of heroism as a primary spur in human nature, even unto, and perhaps especially if it means, death itself. ...

Paris, the city of popular imagination

November 18, 2015

One of the themes to emerge from the Nov. 13 Paris bombings has been why the world – and particularly journalists – has paid more attention to the terrorist acts in Paris than it has to the double suicide bombing in Beirut a day earlier.

There are any number of reasons for this: Bombings in the Middle East, sadly, seem commonplace; the Paris attack is more of an anomaly; more people were killed in Paris (129 to Beirut’s 43), although you can’t really quantify death, of course, each death being a tragedy to someone; the West and particularly the United States have close ties to France, etc. ...