The Terror War and Modern Memory

Lest anyone think I shrank in shame or defeat from Abe's thoughtful response to my Mailer note, be advised that I just flew across the country to catch up with a host of New York pals I haven't seen in ages. (For my money, there's still nothing quite so entertaining as watching the bar patron nearest Roger Kimball go from pasty to lobster the minute Mr. K opens his mouth.) I plan to reply to Abe at some point–and he shouldn't worry too much about mispelling my name, as I am a peaceful man–but I'll have to put that off for now, because I've been meaning to point readers to this:

What do these modern memorials to heroism and sacrifice have in common? * The Vietnam Veterans' Memorial. Designed by college student Maya Lin, it was unveiled in Washington, D.C. on Veterans' Day 25 years ago. It's a black granite thingy-a long, plain wall that lines a big hole dug 10 feet into the ground. It lists the names of the war's 58,000 fallen Americans and . . . nothing else. In her first proposal to build the memorial, Miss Lin explained its purpose: "We, the living, are brought to a concrete realization of these deaths." That's it. Not to honor what they did. Just a reminder that they're dead. Thanks. * The Flight 93 National Memorial. The National Park Service has decided to erect the "Bowl of Embrace," in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, where United Flight 93 crashed to earth on September 11, 2001. Here's the plan: For their heroism in overpowering four Islamic hijackers and foiling their attempt to destroy the White House or the Capitol, the passengers are to be honored with . . . an empty field. It's little comfort that the field is surrounded by a stand of red maple trees planted in an arc that eerily resembles the crescent of Islam. The design's original name: "The Crescent of Embrace." Like the Vietnam memorial, the monument itself has no inscription honoring anyone's actions-just 1970s-style wind chimes and the names of dead people inscribed on glass cubes. * The National September 11 Memorial. On the spot where New York's mighty World Trade Center stood, the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.'s anointed designer, Michael Arad, decrees that there be . . . an American eagle? How about a statue of the three firemen raising the American flag over the rubble? Heck no. Just two huge, square, "reflecting" pools. Maybe you can gaze at your navel through them. In a complex slated to cost $1 billion, this urban swamp is called "Reflecting Absence."

The piece, by Duncan Maxwell Anderson, is well worth a read, but I'd also like to suggest this essay, a year old and no less relevant, by Michael J. Lewis. (Apologies for the subscriber wall; I'll try to persuade the fellows at TNC to make the piece free.)

The last century offers countless examples of how one might treat a great monument destroyed by war. One might repair and rebuild it (as was done with the Benedictine abbey of Monte Cassino), preserve it as a ruin (Coventry Cathedral), or even replace it with a scrupulous facsimile (the Frauenkirche in Dresden). Where there is will, knowledge, and energy, there is little that cannot be done; the destroyed city of Warsaw was practically reassembled from the ground up in the wake of World War II. Then why has it been so difficult to replace the twin towers of the World Trade Center? Four years after the attacks of 9/11—four years of design competitions, planning studies, and public forums—the design that has emerged is an unlovely and unloved fortress of a skyscraper, which seems to inspire no emotion deeper than a kind of resigned chagrin. This was to have been the building of the century: what went wrong?

Lewis ultimately concludes that the task at hand is an impossible one: "Throughout the long, sad process, architects and public alike have looked in vain for designs that matched the pizzazz and punch of the original towers, when they were really looking for something that matched the graphic punch of their collapse. And this no building can provide."

That may be the case, but, as his piece makes clear enough, there are designs that leave something to be desired and then there are designs that distort and insult memory. The "Bowl of Embrace"–formerly "Crescent of Embrace," a lapidary masterwork of tone-deafness–with its studious stripping-away of context, is the latter. Death may be a great equalizer, but memory isn't. We all know what happened on United 93, and the Kindergarten-teacher approach of "Bowl of Embrace" isn't going to change that. But that point hardly needs making. The more troubling theme is "Reflecting Absence," because its apparent popularity suggests that many people don't understand what a memorial is for.

Consider one of the most potent memorials in history, the Marine Corps "battlefield cross." It has dotted every corner of the globe. It requires no government grants, no panel discussions, no oleaginous "statements of purpose"–just a pair of boots, a helmet, and a rifle. Is it meant to reflect absence? In one way, of course it is. In another way, it's meant to remind you of who's absent: not just anybody, but a person who needed to use things like boots, helmets, and rifles. So it also reflects a presence, a fighting spirit that isn't adequately expressed by, say, wind chimes. Is it too much to ask that at Ground Zero, our collective spirit be represented by something that doesn't look for all the world like a pair of dead and sightless eyes?