The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America

by Susan Faludi

Book Overview

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author of "Backlash"--an unflinching dissection of the mind of America after 9/11 In this most original examination of America's post-9/11 culture, Susan Faludi shines a light on the country's psychological response to the attacks on that terrible day. Turning her acute observational powers on the media, popular culture, and political life, Faludi unearths a barely acknowledged but bedrock...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0805086927
• ISBN13: 9780805086928
• Release Date: October 2007
• Publisher: Metropolitan Books
• Length: 351 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.6" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Very Good and Thought Provoking

I thought the book was very good though flawed. Faludi offers a portrait of extremes and speaks in near absolutes. For example she says there were no stories of husbands/males being labeled as victims in the aftermath of 9/11. I remember several stories of both men and women at least in the early days of the coverage. Faludi uses facts that advance her viewpoint but sometimes leaves out or glosses over those that do not. It isn't necessary. The media at the time (and continues today IMO) was so notorious about shaping the narrative and hence the national mood, that it doesn't require that she ignore the few instances that they actually attempted to report accurately and substantively. Her assessment of Jessica Lynch was superficial and incomplete. The second half of the book though interesting, was really not tied together with the first half. There is an attempt to tie the reaction of the men in power today, to similar circumstances in pioneer days and early America. Perhaps to prove that the misogynistic tendencies of the power elite are cultural, indeed that our country is founded upon some of those principles. Too much history is not considered, and the events that she uses as examples are not even loosely similar to the catastrophic events of 9/11. It's apples and oranges. Though I think the points that she is making are quite valid, I don't think she proves her points in these comparisons. I want to be clear that this is a very good, thought provoking book. I learned quite a bit about history and about much of what happened during the 9/11 days and things done afterward in the name of this tragedy. Most of this book comes from a perspective that I had not fully considered. An important perspective that deserves much more attention. It is good to know that people like Faludi are ever vigilant in identifying the often harmful, symbolic messaging that too often passes as mainstream thought and/or conventional wisdom. Additionally, it was very enlightening to understand the perspective of females which is clearly not readily available in most history books. This book is highly recommended.

This book is brilliant

Susan Faludi convincingly shows how 9-11 became a cause and excuse for retrograde male narratives that fulfilled the standard of powerful, heroic men and terrified, helpless women. She also explodes with her research many of the accepted histories of so-called heroic or brave or manly men and proves most of them false. This is an incredibly well-written and -researched book of cultural and historical criticism, written in an accessible style.

Creation (of a) myth

Being a long-time Faludi fan, I was not quite sure if I wanted to read a book about 9/11, not because I had been traumatized by the event or anything, but I was unsure that I would find a book that looked at all of the complex views of such a complex event. However, I found, as usual, Faludi's insight into the propagation of the Male-as-Hero Myth and the Female-as-Victim/Weak Myth to be an intriguing lens through which to look at 9/11. This books continues, in a way, the material that the author brought to BACKLASH, that women in a certain context can be subjugated or oppressed, depending on the need of those in power (in tis case, the media, and by extension, politicians). Faludi adds to the age-old paradigm of women as either virgins or whores; now they are also victims, even when they really aren't. Clearly there were heroines of 9/11, but why have they been obscured? One reviewer of this book actually proves Faludi's point about blaming feminism for being crybabies rather than being "Americans". I hate to be the one to burst anyone's bubble, but women are Americans, too, and they have every right to assert their position as participants in this Great Experiment, especially when they are purposely being erased by conservative pundits and the sexist media. I cannot wait for this book to come out in paperback so that I can put this as required reading on my college syllabus.

Read Faludi's New Book Before You Vote.

The contemporary American political climate is particularly informed and shaped by race and gender because the top contenders for the Democratic nomination in the 2008 presidential campaign are a white woman and a black man. These demographic realities are simultaneously obvious, important and ignored. What is troubling is not that Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama may very well become president, but that while the media appears to be more-or-less self-correcting in filtering-out racism in its coverage of Obama's campaign, it is consistent in its sexist coverage of Clinton's campaign. Why? Faludi's "The Terror Dream" offers a coherent and mature perspective that suggests, if not a resolution of this paradox, then at least further understanding of why it exists. That is a beginning. Read this book before you vote.

Great writing, brilliant reporting and weaving history and contemporary events with new eyes.

First, let's talk about the writing. Faludi is a brilliant writer. She could write about grass growing and make it a great read. There were times, reading her book, where I just had to stop and digest how well she puts things. A number of times, thoughts that she wrote with the beauty of Rumi came to mind. Now, to the content of the book. Faludi submits a premise which she characterizes by a concept we learn in basic biology-- "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." And in her book, she calls the beginning narrative of the book Phylogeny. The German zoologist, Ernst Haeckel, suggested, in this theory, the idea that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny means that as over the short time span of nine months, a fetus, in the womb, goes through ontogenetic phases of development, it recapitulates the stages of development we see as we go up the evolutional scale-- phylogenetically, that took billions of years to develop. So we start, in biology, with single celled, then microscopic organisms, then fish, amphibia, with tails, mammals with tails, until we reach the anthropoid stage. Faludi suggests that as a nation, we are now recapitulating our early evolutionary stages. She says, "Haeckel's hypothesis retains a metaphorical power in the realm of cultural history. The ways that we act, say, in response to a crisis can recapitulate in quick time the centuries-long evolution of our character as a society and of the mythologies we live by. September 11 presented just such a crisis..." In her beginning section, called ONTOGENY, She does a superb job documenting how, after the 9/11 terrorist attack, there were no obvious heroes. No brave surviving rescuers, no brave fighters, no people who bravely dug through the rubble to discover survivors. It happened so fast, all the rescuers who came to the site either died or got there too late. So the nation, the media-- had to come up with heroes. And they chose pregnant women who lost their mates in the attack. To make this work, the media and right wing groups massively attacked the idea of strong women. Even the fashionistas made frilly the fad. The fact was that women had played as much a role in rescuing and dying as men. But the strong women who were there, at the WTC site were marginalized and ignored, or even put down and attacked. Their strength didn't fit the STORY that was being told, being etched into stone by the media. Faludi gives example after example-- in the media, in the fire department, in fashion-- how this attack on women relentlessly took place-- all to serve to make men feel bigger and stronger. She writes, "What mattered was restoring the illusion of a mythic America where women needed men's protection and men succeeded in providing it. What mattered was vanquishing the myth's dark wrin, the humiliating "terror-dream" that 9/11 forced to the surface of the national consciousness. Beginning with the demotion of independent-minded female commentators, the elevation of "manly men" at ground zer