Discussion of Chris Cleave's Incendiary: April 8-15, 2008. With the participation of Chris Cleave.

What I felt was most compelling about this novel was the narrative voice. The characters were all distinct from each other, and I found myself being able to picture them all just as clearly in my mind. And yet, as much as I felt like I knew the main character toward the end of the novel, at the point where she douses Petra in gasoline, I really wasn't sure if she was going to light her on fire. Maybe it was the stream of consciousness feel about the narrative style (due to lack of commas), or simply the nature of the story, but either way I was engaged and curious as to how events would unfold.

The subtle descriptions of a country gradually declining into a chaotic place in this novel reminded me of Darrieussecq's Pig Tales. The first person narrative was just as poignantly honest and straightforward, with similar casual descriptions of an increasingly restrictive/paranoid government. Examples would be the mentioning of electricity being turned off without explanation in Incendiary, and the deportation of immigrants (also without much explanation or elaboration) in Pig Tales. The key difference for me were the spikes of overt social commentary in Incendiary, such as the narrator's criticism of the government's discrimination toward Muslims and direction of the War on Terror. Also, even more important, was that this book felt very real, where in Pig Tales there was a much more fantastical tone and theme.

By "real" I mean it felt like the May Day bombing actually did happen, which is what the primary inspiration was for the novel. I suppose it is because of the tragically uncanny coincidence of the release date of the novel and the subway bombings in London.

I apologize if this entry is disorganized, but the truth is, I finished the novel yesterday afternoon and I am still processing it. There is so much to think about!

I suppose the largest two questions left in my head (maybe the most obvious) were: What is the use of extreme measures of security and caution when even our own governments may be complicit in violence against citizens? It seems a cynical question, a terribly morbid thought, but after hearing all those conspiracy theories after 9/11, it seems like a relevant one.

And, how can we defend ourselves and if we do not understand the enemy? That almost seems like a basic question, one that is necessary and applicable in situations beyond war. This book made it painfully obvious that the western world still does not understand where the extremists are coming from. It is still a matter of "us" (rational, pure, good) versus "them" (radical, corrupt, evil).

Hello Astrid, I really like your post. Please don't apologize for being "disorganized" about the novel - goodness knows, three years and two novels later, I'm still disorganized about it.

I'm going to respond to the two questions you raise, and of course these are my subjective responses and not definitive ones. (And in fact the level of analysis that is being applied in this forum is higher than the analysis I'm used to applying to my own work, and I'm not versed in the techniques of criticism, so I hope everyone will excuse what will likely be a relatively humble contribution from me).

You ask "What is the use of extreme measures of security and caution when even our own governments may be complicit in violence against citizens? It seems a cynical question, a terribly morbid thought, but after hearing all those conspiracy theories after 9/11, it seems like a relevant one."

I want to come out and say very clearly that I do not buy any of the post-9/11 conspiracy theories. Sadly the lack of vigilance and the failure to follow security procedures are quite sufficient to explain what happened on that day, and they are thoroughly (and very readably) documented in the official report of the 9/11 Commission. (Incidentally, it is a healthy nation that can publish a document like that. You wouldn't find a similar document in the PRC, for example).

The conspiracy theories surrounding the events themselves distract from the real issue, in my opinion, which is the nature of America's response to 9/11.

I think the conspiracy theorists misunderstand how the world works. Government is not a well-disciplined, omnipotent structure. It is like any other organization of more than two people: mostly benevolent, often dysfunctional, and sadly fallible. In my last job I managed a team of ten people, and some of the screw-ups we managed to achieve under my glorious leadership were quite breathtaking. And that's just ten people. Imagine when you're trying to coordinate the whole staff of a federal government. As your own 40th President said, "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'"

So I think rather than believing in conspiracies, it's interesting to examine how human fallibility gets into the system. In 'Incendiary' I examine a dilemma with which police and intelligence services all around the world are faced daily. That is, at what point do you act on the intelligence you have gathered?

In 'Incendiary' the security forces are not engaged in a conspiracy. They have the protection of the population as their sole priority, and they make a judgment based on the balance of probabilities, and that judgment is shown by events to have been the wrong one.

After that, there is a cover-up - but that too is an everyday human occurrence, sadly, and it isn't equivalent to intent. To equate cover-up with conspiracy is the 'post hoc, ergo propter hoc' fallacy, and the internet, for example, is stoned on it.

So as to your first question, I think it's a good one, but I'm not sure that my novel addresses it. I think the way the novel would formulate it would be: What are the relative values that decision-makers should place on the lives of different groups of people when making their decisions about whom most to protect with their limited resources? And that of course is a question, not an answer, which is not very helpful of me I know, but if I was smart enough to come up with the answers then I wouldn't be writing novels about my country, I'd be running it. And frankly I can't be trusted to run a bath.

As to your second question, "how can we defend ourselves if we do not understand the enemy?", I think it is an extremely good and perceptive one and gets right to the heart of the novel and of the place our Western culture is at right now. As you say, "It is still a matter of 'us' (rational, pure, good) versus 'them' (radical, corrupt, evil)." You are absolutely right I think. I'm going to have something to say about this in my talk at the Independence Auditorium this evening, but for now let me just agree with you how incredibly pervasive right now is the idea that evil is external, and "out there", while good is in our hearts and within our borders.

You only need to look at the current vogue for zombies to see this idea subjected to scrutiny. In the movies "28 Days Later" or "I am Legend" or in Stephen King's novel "Cell", evil is externalized and then it is vanquished.

The appeal of zombie films, of course, is that what we're really scared about - that good and evil exist within us simultaneously and in uneasy equilibrium - is easier to talk about if the evil is made flesh. And then preferably butchered on a large scale, with a lot of nice CGI work.

Unfortunately in real life we don't have that luxury, so there is a huge temptation to simply imagine or collectively wish that the evil was external - incarnate in those pesky Iranians, for example, terrifying but dumb flesh-eating zombies that they are (Act I), who will chillingly start to become more intelligent and learn our ways and use our own technologies against us (Act II), but who will ultimately be vanquished through our pure-hearted application of some new mass-extermination technology (Act III).

What we are really scared of, of course, is ourselves, and the future we are making for ourselves. Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road' is the most perfect exposition of this. He is such a good writer that he doesn't even need to use zombies to show us the horror of what is waiting patiently inside us for its dawn.

I understand now that my wording was unclear. "Complicit" was the wrong word to use. You reorganized the question very well by saying, "What are the relative values that decision-makers should place on the lives of different groups of people when making their decisions about whom most to protect with their limited resources?" I didn't mean to say that I personally believed in the conspiracy theories about 9/11, but rather, the narrator's hysterical realization (THEY KNEW THEY KNEW) reminded me of the paranoid conversations I kept hearing around me in 2001. There were plenty of people who already disliked the Bush administration, so it was easy to blame. I agree completely that theories and reactions against Islamic groups are examples of a scared public attempting to make their fears more concrete. To make an invisible enemy visible.

The word "enemy" is probably very much part of the problem as well. It seems like another way of polarizing sides, us and them (again).

I sympathized with Terrence Butcher very much. His character was consumed with guilt for something he didn't have control over (as he stated, the decision was made above him).

It is that lack of control that makes zombie movies so terrifying, I believe. The whole zombie craze was rough for me, since for a long time it was the one monster I had nightmares about, without fail. The "Zombie Survival Guide" fixed that fear for me (I'm not kidding. After reading it my zombie nightmares were more "controlled" and I knew exactly how to dispatch them. It was actually kind of fun). I agree completely that zombie films are another example of a collective fear of dislocation and chaos. Terrorist cells seem to be everywhere, full operational and independent, practically indestructible. In the movies, zombies seem to be everywhere, nearly impervious to weapons, and bent on our destruction.

Astrid,

I too found the narrative voice of this novel to be most compelling. I thought that the way in which Chris Cleave chose to write it was quite clever due to the fact that the narrative voice is consistent with the nature of the narrator's character. She is a simple girl as she mentions to Osama and she is writing this letter as a simple girl would with grammar errors and all. She does not sugar coat anything and as Jasper Black might say, she "tells it like it is". For me, this is why the novel works so well. It made the novel flow nicely and it made me want to continue on reading because I felt like the narrator was real and that she was spilling her heart out on paper.

Another aspect of the novel that I found to be compelling was the scene on pages 38 and 39 in which Chris Cleave parallels the soccer game between Arsenal and Chelsea to the sexual intercourse between the narrator and Jasper Black. Not only was the scene incredibly intense, but it was a great literary device. It set the tone for the rest of the novel where after the narrator associates sexual intercourse with May Day. From that moment on when Jasper Black touches her she has flashbacks to May Day and perhaps you could say that this represents her guilt for being deceiptful to her boy and her husband, "You're worse than nothing Jasper Black. When you touch me all I can see is that bloody explosion. I don't know what I was thinking with you. I wish I'd never met you. I loved my husband and my boy but I waved them good-bye and I took you home and had sex with you on the bloody sofa didn't I. And then my life blew up. I didn't deserve my husband and my boy. . . (68)."

There is much more I'd like to address in the novel, especially having to do with the ideology that the victims of May Day deserved what Osama did to them (page 50), but I will wait for our class discussion on Tuesday. Perhaps in preparation for discussing this ideology though I'd like to propose a question: There are some scholars out there that suggest that the West is to blame for what is happening to them in regards to terrorism because of their liberal cultures and governments. Are you able to find any truth in this argument?

I really enjoyed the narration in this novel, and I thought that it was part of allowed this novel to affect me. I was able to identify very well with the narrator, not only because of her frank, straightforward speech, or her strong emotions, but also because neither she nor her husband or son were identified by name. I think that this allowed me to become closer than I would have if she had been clearly labeled.

I also was very affected by her visions of her son, and I was sort of wondering how her boy would have felt about Mr. Rabbit being used as a sort of spy... How he was witness not only to the narrator's infidelity, but also her country's.

Like Astrid, I was confused about what to think when the narrator threatened Petra in the newspaper office... I was not sure what she was going to do. I thought that she very clearly had a breakdown after the story wasn't run, and that made her very unpredictable (which is understandable, I think...).

I thought that it was interesting that she ended up forgiving Osama, and placing the blame on her own lover... I feel like she needed someone tangible to blame, and I think that we saw this in our own country not only with the conspiracy theories after 9/11, but also with the spur of racism towards Muslims and many other middle-easterns.

Hello LM Gifford, I like your post and your last paragraph "I feel like she needed someone tangible to blame, and I think that we saw this in our own country not only with the conspiracy theories after 9/11, but also with the spur of racism towards Muslims and many other middle-easterns."

I'm going to talk about zombies again, as I did in my response to Astrid's post. Forgive me, but I am really into zombies at the moment.

We have a lot of intolerance towards Muslims in the UK too following events of recent years, and I feel that this is in large part caused by a terrible confluence of (a) our desire to have evil externalized and (b) the fact that Muslims are often easily visually differentiable by a combination of their dress and their skin color.

Blaming Muslims for what Osama did is no smarter than blaming Christians for what Timothy McVeigh did, but I fear it's going to get worse before it gets better.

On last year’s forum, Chris Cleave had responded to a student who’s post paralleled the death toll reports in Incendiary with Baudrillard’s idea of reality collapsing upon itself with the following:

“…I'd never interpreted this part of the novel as Baudrillardian, but now you mention it I can really see it ... But this makes me nervous, and I think I need to make clear for the record that I don't buy the whole of the Baudrillard package tour of terror. I start to have real problems with the Baudrillard school when they get into the masochism thing - the idea that we collectively will terrorist destruction upon ourselves. I think that is a very seductive and extremely dangerous idea, and while I am pleased that it exists as a hypothesis, I hope I dedicate my writing to the production of beautiful and powerful counterexamples.”

I have pulled this quote out of the context of history to enjoy the duality of Cleave’s relationship to his work, and to evolve a discussion concerning the virtual problems of the “counterexamples” Cleave produces within his text. Specifically, the relationship between the female speaker and Petra is an example of a process through which the victim may become concrete post-sacrifice; as opposed to the previously anticipated, purposeful and definitive sacrificial victims of ancient rite.

The May Day attacks propel the women into two opposite spectra: one who’s reality becomes dissembled by the event and renders her victim status, while the other’s is advanced by the surviving society’s spiked reliance on the media to define the event and its impact. They become tragic rivals throughout the course of the novel, or each other’s Other, caught within a mimetic crisis that is rooted within their shared desire for the object, Jasper Black.

The Othering of Petra is not created by two desires affixing themselves to one entity, but rather from one desire stemming from the Other’s being –the speaker’s desire toward Black develops only after Petra’s physical introduction in the text. We watch as the speaker adopts the physical characteristics of Petra in attempts to further seduce Black; these scenes can be understood as the victim’s attempts to transcend the Other by becoming the Other, and ultimately, this cannot resolve the rivalry that has put them at odds with one another.

Their relationship works as a mirror toward the social crisis of post-9/11 reality which is stagnated by the destruction of all that controlled violence had built, catching the aftermath within a collapse of uncontrolled vengeance; the vengeance in the text for Osama, for instance, is absent –the speaker directs her reciprocal action towards a substitute, and never to whom the letters are written, which is to say, she is merely rippling the effects of the original act upon Others, therefore extending her own static state.

The question I pose to the class is: what resolves the conflict between two realities with a shared desire and more pertinently, by what means is the speaker able to resolve her plight as an undefined victim caught between two combative realms of existence?

Social theorist Rene Girard writes that “preferences registered for one side or another never prevent the authors from constantly underlining the symmetrical relationship between the adversaries.” True of Cleave’s pleasure taken from Baudrillard’s hypothetical existence and also of the counterexample he creates in his characters.

I really liked this novel, and I believe it is because, as discussed in class, one is given a moral comparison throughout the book. In other novels we have read for class, such as American Psycho and Dolly City, horrific events are occurring (mostly murder and torture) and they are talked about and acted upon in such a nonchalant way. The reader has no characters or systems in the novel to compare the "wrong" actions to, nothing to show that the actions are wrong. The murder and torture just are. In Incendiary, the reader and narrator recognize the "right" events from the "wrong." The narrator is the victim, and unjust events have happened to her. She is right and the reader can relate to her pain. That is, until the end when she almost sets Petra on fire. This surprised me, though it didn't at the same time. I was surprised because she was my "right" character, with unjust events happening to her. Now suddenly she was participating in "unjust" death acts. I was not surprised, though, because it accurately, I believe, portrayed the desperation of a human. One can only take so much.

As mentioned in previous posts, it is terrifying to see the limits of a human, and also the point at which the evil one constantly tries to cover up, but that does simultaneously exist within, shows its face. Ultimately, the narrator was able to defeat the desire and instinct for revenge, showing the reader again the "right" and "good" side. Compassion and feeling take over because what the narrator was waiting for, to not "feel anything for her (Petra) any more not even a tiny bit" (235), did not happen. She felt, even a tiny bit, so she left without killing Petra and following through on her instinct. As I talk about more below, her human side seemed to take over.

I was really struck by moments when the narrator talks of the seemingly emptiness in people's eyes, specifically that "there wasn't anything in his eyes at all" (216). This occurred right before the man who was desperately trying to get into the woman's Range Rover after the (Jasper's) bomb threat. The woman would not let him in and in his desperation, anger and need for revenge, he takes the Zippo out of his pocket, nothing in his eyes, and lights the fuel pipe. Not only is there the irony of our actions in need for revenge, doing exactly what one is running from and fighting, but also the reminder of lack of humanity in a person. This man became an animal acting only on instincts of revenge. He lets instinct control him, differing from the narrator who, as described above, stops herself and chooses differently. It reminds me of discussing Badiou (I believe it was) in class, specifically controlling our instincts and overcoming evil. Am I correct in this connection? Either way, I believe this novel portrayed various characters who are faced with choices and challenged to control evil desires and instincts. Impelling, challenging and thought-provoking read!

After reading Incendiary, I definitely felt that Mr. Cleave conveyed the feeling of Emptiness that the narrator suffered quite effectively. I found myself in tears at the end of the novel, not so much because of the events of "May day," but because of the progression of sadness the narrator suffered from losing her child and husband. I felt myself identifying with Petra when she tells the narrator to move on, and when the narrator notices how "May Day" slowly becomes less and less talked about. However, I see through the eyes of this narrator that "may day" has left a permanent hole in her soul that she will never move on from. In the end of the novel, we see how this woman is left to face a life of sadness and hallucinations of her dead son. There is no real hope for her, and possibly for London in this "war on terror."

I feel this war is truly unique in the sense that our enemy is not a single recognizable force, but a network of fundamentalists who are fiercely anti-western. I thought it was incredibly interesting how Mr. Cleave explained the post 9-11 conspiracy theories touched upon in such works as Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 911." These theories offended me, and to be honest it was inconceivable for me to believe my government would allow 9/11 to occur knowing how many lives would be lost. Aside from being offended, I also appreciated that I do live in a free country where these conspiracy theories can be hatched and divulged to the public. Mr. Cleave explains this when he declares these theories never would have happened in places such as PRC. In fact, having these theories surface only reinforced the face that they were false if they were allowed to surface. (Forgive my confusion, my minds going in circles!)

I thought it was interesting that as the novel progressed, we saw a London with more and more security restrictions. If you cannot live free in a free country, what is the use?

I am sure I will have more to say on this novel, and like Astrid, I apologize for my disorganization...

Hello Jenna, this is an amazing post - it blew me away, really - and your insights give a lot to think about. I've been considering your analysis of the rivalry between Petra and the narrator. Your idea is clearly strong enough to merit further development by you or the group, don't people think? I guess I am mesmerized by your idea of Petra and the narrator attempting to transcend each other by assuming aspects of the other's identity - of course this could be seen as an active process on both their parts.

If you are holding that oddly symbiotic (and mutually annihilatory) structure up as a mirror to the contemporary so-called 'clash of civilizations', as I think you are, then that could be a very interesting line to follow to its conclusion. (And perhaps to extend in consideration of similar uneasy equilibria in other texts - for example between Patrick Bateman and Timothy Price, or Jekyll and Hyde, or Christ and Lucifer, etc...)

If you wanted to pursue that line as a metaphor for the conflict between realities in the wider sense, then I guess you would need to think carefully about the level of reality on which the confrontation takes place. In 'Incendiary' Petra and the narrator, for example, are both attractive women and there is an obvious level of physicality on which they compete. It is in the other aspects of their reality - those aspects perhaps most relevant to their identity, such as their intelligence, their sense of humor, their social class and their maternal status - where they differ and where they have to assume unnatural behaviors in order to create a battlefield upon which their conflict can take place.

And yet, as they come to resemble one another more and more, we are forced to consider the reality of both the characters at the level of basic representation. By the time the narrator is standing with her thumb on the wheel of the cigarette lighter with Petra doused in gasoline, it is hard not to see both women as aspects of the same psyche in the abstract mind of the text in which the characters are thoughts.

It's a novel that is making its mind up as it goes along.

The same logic could be applied to the confrontation between the narrator and her idea of Osama bin Laden. (Note right away that she is addressing her idea of Osama bin Laden rather than the man himself, so from the outset she is writing a text to persuade an aspect of herself to change its ways). But she-and-Osama have to work harder than she-and-Petra in order to establish a battlefield on which the confrontation can take place. The narrator has to humanize Osama before she can confront him. (This is why she endlessly awards mundane details to him - the collecting of CDs, the living on his own in a cave surrounded by goats, the rusting of his Klashnikov in the rain). But she also has to dehumanize herself. (This is the subtext of her mental disintegration). She has to work to bring them both onto the same level of reality, and by the time she has done this she realizes that her original idea of herself and her original idea of Osama have both been altered and moved closer to one another. And so the novel closes, not with her extermination of Petra and a vengeful invective against Osama, but with her sparing of Petra and the almost mystical invocation to Osama to "come to me".

Whilst some commentators have seen in these three closing words a redemption, and others have considered them a traitorous connivance with the enemy, I tend to see them as rather bleak. For me those words are an ongoing plea for the conflicting aspects of the novel's psyche to come together onto one level where they may for once and for all be reconciled. That this seems unlikely is the novel's tragedy. The novel and its narrator and its author and its readers are doomed to a fragmented reality which merely draws more tightly in on itself as the book closes. To borrow a line from Bret Easton Ellis, "come to me" is not an exit.

I agree with the readers who posted before me who were both compelled by the narrative voice and enjoyed it. It did keep me reading and continuously enthralled with the novel. I think what most attracted me to the narrator's story was her completely honest voice. It reminded me of the other novels we have read and their honesty as well. It is interesting that this honesty is what makes these novels so EXTREME compared to what I am used to reading. The narrator reveals her strength in this honesty, and you can not help but admire her for it even in times of indiscretion.

In some ways, I even envy the narrator for this honesty, especially her sarcastic and point blank way of asking questions of an infamous and dangerous terrorist. Her yearning toward understanding the events of May Day that killed her son and husband, and her utter need for an explanation on why they were taken from her are all legitimate and common thoughts we all have after a horrific tragedy. She asked questions that I continue to ask myself since 9/11 and whenever I see the death toll of soldiers fighting the war on terrorism rise. ('Why?' 'Who?' 'To what end?') However, she went right to the source by asking them directly of Osama. I wonder if her questions in the wake of terror are also those of Chris Cleave and in writing this, if he gained some kind of peace or closure?

At the beginning of the novel, I was uncomfortable every time I read the word "Osama." It was so unfamiliar to see his name in prose and outside the context of a newspaper article where he is described as a monster. By the end of the novel, however, Osama seems almost human to me in the way the narrator has been speaking to him. Her letter to him seems to bring her closure and even leads her to embrace Osama and invite him into her life. She even tries to persuade him to join her in putting the world he blew up back together again.

Wow. I finished this novel a few hours ago and I am still in shock. Aside from the fact that I felt like my entire body had been run over by a Mack truck, this book left me with a lot to think about. I must agree with the previous posters who stated that the strong voice of the narrator is one of the most engaging aspects of the book, as well as the somewhat taboo topic of modern day terrorism. I have little notes scribbled all throughout the margins of my book, but one of the first things that struck me about the narrator's voice was that she wasn't angry with Osama; rather she seemed to understand the motives for his actions, an attribute that I was entirely not expecting from a grieving wife and mother. I absolutely loved the underlying humor of the narrator which was pervasive throughout the entire story. Her blunt personality and humorous insights I found to be a type of comedic relief to the heavy tone of the novel's central issues. One of my favorite lines was in the beginning of the novel when the narrator is talking about Osama bin Laden's terrorist attacks and she says: "The Sun says you are an EVIL MONSTER but I don't believe in evil I know it takes 2 to tango". I just thought this line was extremely poignant because it made me think about the events in the novel in an entirely different light-the actual reasons behind the terrorism, as they are not just purely senseless acts of violence, but that these suicide bombers and terrorist give their lives for their beliefs. I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this and I believe there is a part within the novel that addresses what I am talking about, but I can't find it right now. Anyways.

I also thoroughly enjoyed how the novel was set up as a letter to Osama because the casual, "natural" tone of the narrator made me connect with her instantaneously. Which also made me wonder if there was a specific reason why the novel was set up as a letter as opposed to a simple narrative? I was also wondering what the class felt was the central theme of the novel? The impact of terrorism? The perversion of the truth by the media and the government? When I read that the government had known about the May Day attacks before they happened, but had chose NOT to prevent them in order to maintain their knowledge about the terrorist's plans and future attacks, I was initially appalled, however, I'm not sure what is better? I feel like as a reader you are initially angry because the bombing could have been prevented and you are so attached to the narrator and her views, but then perhaps the information they retained by allowing the attacks to go through may have prevented an even more catastrophic terrorist attack from happening in the future. I was wondering what the opinion of the class was regarding this issue?

Incendiary does, as Astrid said, feel very “real.” However, I do disagree with her about the supposed lack of clarity about whether or not she was going to really burn Petra. If she had really burned Petra, I felt that would be very out of character for her. I mean, she is writing a letter to Osama bin Laden, who was the mastermind behind these fictional “May Day” attacks, and she doesn’t even seem to hate him, so why would she kill Petra if she is the kind of caring person who would think there was good in Osama bin Laden if only she could reach it? Even a nervous breakdown wouldn’t change her personality that much, and ultimately, it doesn’t.

Even though I knew what was coming from reading the summary on the back of the book, I was shocked when the suicide bombing actually happened because of the gruesome detail in which the scene is described when our narrator arrives. I also loved how even though she saw the wreckage of the stadium, she still believed that her son and husband were alive and she later thought her son was alive when she saw the boy on the street with his mother. Those parts were so tragic and her grieving was so well-done. Even her feelings towards Terence Butcher, which I took as a need for comfort, were very spot-on. What I liked best about the book though, was how she was never able to escape her grief. In a lot of books the characters experience a traumatic event and after a while they move on, but to me, this is not realistic. When you experience grief of that magnitude, it is impossible to fully move on from it, because it changes your life and losing people that mean that much to you is not something you can recover from.

A female narrator, that's odd. Punctuation? Mood set on page two. Mr. Rabbit made me cry. I just want you to love my son. She seems sedated. Sex is nice. You look like a gentleman. My husband. My boy. No names? Little monster. But Jasper Black does. She's a terrible bloody girl, just a bundle of nerves. I have contempt for her tears. Penis? 912, clever. She prays for death. Elton John must also. What the fuck (dental records). Thank god for Mena...

Because terrorist attacks exist within ideological wars, I was interested to see that a book has been written not with an ideological focus, but as to revolve around a wife, husband, child, and Osama. The wife's attempts at communicating with Osama are unsuccessful because while she is targeting an individual, he is targeting ideologies. He cannot love her son, as she wants him to, because his concern never existed on the personal level. Osama never meant to kill her boy, per se, just a representation of a system which her son belonged to.

Beyond the usual Muslim/Christian clash, this book brought the clash of scale to the forefront of my mind. When our perspectives zoom out and we just say "muslim," we risk losing site of the fact that some things like constant fighting, praying for death, and hysteria (irrationality) are (more or less) a part of everyone's life, regardless of what culture they belong to.

Cleave attributed 9/11 to people's general incompetence, rather than a controlled conspiracy. The occurrence of government employees like his husband character make Cleave's attribution more conceivable. Imagine a bureaucracy built upon TV watching, beer drinking, gamblers.

If I could take a short side step away from the actual body of text, I would like to ask Mr. Cleave a question regarding the interview that appeared saturday in the Providence Journal.

In this interview, several quotes were given from various sources (newspapers, online review forums) alternately praising and condemning Incendiary. One review posted on Amazon.com stated the book was assigned for a college course and that the absence of morality and proper punctuation provoked this student to complain to her college, asking "ARE WE SUPPOSED TO LEARN FROM THIS?!?!?!"

My answer would be yes, just maybe not grammar. However, I understand that choices in punctuation and grammar were made to evoke a certain tone, to convey a certain character. The form contributes to the overall meaning of the text. Dismissing such choices as bad grammar or inappropriate punctuation to me ignores the real effort put into the writing process. In other words, it mistakes the character for the author.

My question for Mr. Cleave would be, does this bother you? In the interview you state that you love the type of person who hates the characters you write about. Indeed, the narrator and many others within the novel display questionable behavior. But if a reader mistakes what you write about for who you are, do the implications ever worry you?

Also, regarding one reviewer's comments that it was simply in poor taste to open a novel with "Dear Osama" : when talking about such ire-raising issues as terrorism, must "taste" play a part? Does literary "restraint" ever yeild relevant work, ever get people talking and thinking about critical, demanding issues? In other words, is any topic, approached in any way, ever forbidden for the author/artist? Again, my answer would be no, nothing is forbidden for the artist. If art must be approached strictly in "tasteful" ways, we wouldn't have artists.

Hello Nicholas, I love the first part of your post. I think you express the experience of reading the book in a very compelling style. If I had my way, the text of your first paragraph would be printed on the cover of the novel instead of the weird abstract design that's on there now. It would really make people want to take a look. Will you be my publicist?

Regarding your paragraph about the narrator "targeting an individual, [whereas Osama] is targeting ideologies", and your insight that "Osama never meant to kill her boy, per se, just a representation of a system which her son belonged to", I think you have nailed the issue of both parties confronting an enemy that is a chimera of their own invention.

Here is a direct question then for you and / or the group. Do we think the 'Western' and the 'Islamic' worlds could create a platform upon which conflict resolution was possible?

(In traditional wars we fight until ons side is abject and then the winning side dictates the terms of peace. So peace treaties tend to be quite dry lists of bullet points. But what is the discussion that would finish a war on terror? Can we imagine a document that would enshrine the untimate peace? Who would be the signatories and how would it be worded and who would witness the act? Wouldn't that make a great short story for someone?)