The last post…
... about 9/11. For a while. Seven straight posts about a single subject is too much for some people but it was a special anniversary yesterday and the week-long tribute was important here because that day five years ago really did change the world, and not just in the tectonic way. Personally, the shock waves are still resonating and the Rainy Day that woke up to greet the dawn on 11 September 2001 was a very changed person by the time darkness fell that day. Gone forever are notions about the benign kaleidoscope of cultures and in their place is a horror of relativism and a distinct aversion to all who would trade away our freedoms for the sake of an illusory peace with those who hate the very notion of free will.
Initially, the thought here was a post in praise of New York's astonishing recovery: The braggadocio is back. More than 5,800 apartments have been built in Lower Manhattan since 2001, and the median residential sales price has jumped 75 percent. Big corporations — the Bank of New York and Moody's Investors Service — are building millions of square feet of new office space. Hermes and Tiffany are opening shops and Goldman Sachs is throwing up a 43-story office tower. Five years ago, downtown Manhattan near the site of the Twin Towers was covered in gray ash, but now its streets are lined with boutiques and bidders battle for $1 million apartments with floor-to-ceiling windows. Many outsiders find this shocking, but New York is a city that likes to move on, and fast. This ability of people to pick themselves up, dust themselves off and move on disturbs more cautious countries, but it's the American way.
Instead of that post, however, we're linking to the latest essay by Martin Amis, which appeared on Sunday in the Observer. With "The age of horrorism" it could well be that the until-recently dormant, but enormously gifted Amis has finally found the subject that can spur him to greatness. He writes with a passion that rages. Read him.
