BEIGBEIDER WINS UK PRIZE FOR SEPTEMBER 11 NOVEL

French writer Frederic Beigbeder's novel dealing with the September 11 attacks in the United States won the Independent newspaper's prize for foreign fiction, the newspaper announced Thursday.

Windows on the World remains "the boldest" work so far to deal with the 2001 terrorist attacks, the Independent said, describing its decision to award the title its GBP 10,000 (EUR 15,000, USD 19,000) annual prize.

Beigbeder, a former advertising copywriter, emerged as a controversial but popular writer in France in 2001 with a best-selling parody of his former profession, 99 Francs.

He has been belittled by US and French critics as publicity-hungry and shallow, but the Independent hailed Windows on the World as a "serious" work grappling with the lingering horror of September 11.

[ The result is just schlock. Beigbeder is simply incapable of writing a conventional narrative or creating autonomous fictional characters. -- Josh Lacey, Guardian, 09.11.04

There is everything to dislike here: a gimmicky setup, wherein each chapter ticks off another minute in the countdown to Yorston's annihilation; the endless recentering of the significance of 9/11 back onto the author himself; and too many yadda yadda interior monologues about sex and death. And if one chose to quote heartlessly from ''Windows on the World'' (''I chew on Bubble Yum and the heartache of orphans'') one could make it appear criminally asinine. And yet, almost in spite of himself, Beigbeder has happened onto something true.
-- Stephen Metcalf, NYT, 04.17.05 ]

"His novel mitigates the terror, panic and desperate affirmations of love in the tower with a discursive, satirical view from Paris. He takes aim, above all, at the mindless hedonism of his own generation, a hedonism that collapsed with the towers," it said.

Needless to say, we do not share the Independent's gushy appreciation of "boldness" and "mitigation", nor its idea of what constitutes a "serious" work. Nor are we impressed by M. Beigbeder's wandering idea of the nombriliste deep think-cum-soap opera. No doubt there will be people who read WOTW and think M. Beigbeder on point. Of course, M. Beigbeder was nowhere near the WTC the day of which he writes. We were. On point he is not.

Here is a sampling of WOTW's less-than-deathless prose:

"Hell lasts an hour and three quarters. As does this book."
"American Trash? I'm a redneck, a member of the American Trashcan."
"...the smear of wet asphalt behind the cleaning trucks looks like the slime left by an aluminum slug on a piece of plywood."
"Everything important in America is magnolia."
"Maybe the Al Qaeda terrorists were simply sick to death of beige, orange uniforms, and the businesslike smile of the waitresses."
"Frankly my dear, I don't give a Saddam!"
"Windows on the Planes. Windows on the Crash. Windows on the Smoke. Broken Windows."
"They suffered for 102 minutes, the average running time of a Hollywood film."
"Kof kof (he coughs)."
"...people were dying of starvation in America as they were in Russia, but those who were dying of starvation in America were free to do so."
"...later I'd go home drunk in a yellow contraption driven by a Haitian voodoo master."
"There's very little difference between a toddler's life and a Shakespeare play."
"(paragraph cut)"
"(page cut)"

Even by the schoolboy's deep-think yardstick this is a very low order of crap.
WOTW is not really a read. It is a skim. The skimmiest of skims.

The answer to this, is very bad indeed.

"Kof kof (he coughs)."
"He didn't really write that, paranthesis and all did he?" wondered the poster.