01.4

“Ruin More Beautiful than the Building.” Article-interview by Ann Treneman. (London) Times, 13 September. Mailer comments on the attack on the World Trade Centre. He described the buildings before the attack a “two huge buck teeth” and said the ruin was more striking. He watched the event unfold on television non-stop for several hours in his Provincetown home, something that “only happens a few times in your life. Jack Kennedy. Martin Luther King. Maybe ten times.” He excoriates terrorism, but then goes on to say that “what Americans refuse to recognize is that large parts of the world, particularly the most backward nations, see us as cultural oppressors and aesthetic oppressors” who build “high-rise hotels and buildings around their airports.” His conclusion: “We are going to be the most hated nation on earth.”