¹ Running daily in 2001 and weekly through 2002, “Portraits of Grief” won the 2002 “Public Service” Pulitzer. Felicity Barringer, “Pulitzers Focus on Sept. 11, and the Times Wins 7,” New York Times, 9 April 2002, at www.nytimes.com/2002/04/09/nyregion/pulitzers-focus-on-sept-11-and-the-times-wins-7.html, accessed 20 Oct. 2016.

² Jeffrey Brown, “Conversation: Amy Waldman, Author of ‘The Submission’,” PBS Newshour, 7 Sept. 2011, at www.pbs.org/newshour/art/conversation-amy-waldman-author-of-the-submission, accessed 29 May 2015.

³ Heather Grossman, “Q & A with Amy Waldman: What if a Muslim American had Won the 9/11 Memorial Competition?”, MetroFocus, 25 Aug. 2011, at www.thirteen.org/metrofocus/2011/08/qa-with-amy-waldman-what-if-a-muslim-american-had-won-the-911-memorial-competition, accessed 17 June 2016.

⁴ Doss, Erika, Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2010), 13, 38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵ Howell Raines, “My Times,” Atlantic Monthly, May 2004, at www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/2004/05/raines.htm, accessed 24 March 2016.

⁶ Eve Gerber, “The Best 9/11 Books,” Daily Beast, 8 Sept. 2011, at www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/09/08/best-books-on-9-11-amy-waldman-picks-favorites.html, accessed 29 May 2015.

⁷ Andrew Lawless, “Literature as Anti-memorial: Amy Waldman in Interview,” TMO Magazine, n.d., at www.threemonkeysonline.com/literature-as-an-anti-memorial-amy-waldman-in-interview, accessed 29 May 2015.

⁸ “Amy Waldman Comes to SUNY New Paltz for Distinguished Speaker Series,” The Little Rebellion, 19 Oct. 2012, at http://thelittlerebellion.com/index.php/2012/10/amy-waldman-comes-to-suny-new-paltz-for-distinguished-speaker-series, accessed 14 May 2018.

⁹ James E. Young et al., “Virtual Roundtable on Amy Waldman's The Submission: James E. Young, Rebecca L. Walkowitz, Nadia Abu el-Haj, and Bruce Robbins,” Public Books, 12 March 2012, at www.publicbooks.org/fiction/virtual-roundtable-on-amy-waldmans-the-submission, accessed 29 May 2015.

¹⁰ Lawless.

¹¹ Although the 9/11 memorial jury reviewed more than five thousand designs and thus operated on a much larger scale than the Columbia archive, which recorded and transcribed 440 interviews in 2001, and followed up with 202 of those participants in 2002 and 2003, the two entities shared a similar approach to memorialization.

¹² Doss, 356.

¹³ Ibid.

¹⁴ Young, James E., “The Memorial's Arc: Between Berlin's Denkmal and New York City's 9/11 Memorial,” Memory Studies, 9, 3 (2016), 325–31, 327CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁵ Young, James E., “Memory and Monument after 9/11,” in Crownshaw, Richard, Kilby, Jane, and Rowland, Antony, eds., The Future of Memory (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010), 77–92, 80Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Ibid., 89.

¹⁷ Clark, Mary Marshall, “Herodotus Reconsidered: An Oral History of September 11, 2001, in New York City,” Radical History Review, 111 (2011), 79–89, 80, 79CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Of course, the individual and national narratives are not completely distinct, an issue explored in both The Submission and this essay.

¹⁸ Gray, Richard, After the Fall: American Literature since 9/11 (Chichester: Wiley, 2011), 16CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁹ Randall, Martin, 9/11 and the Literature of Terror (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), 135CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁰ Gray, 17.

²¹ Morley, Catherine, “‘How Do We Write about This?’ The Domestic and the Global in the Post-9/11 Novel,” Journal of American Studies, 45, 4 (2011), 717–31, 720CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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²⁴ Leggatt, Matthew, “Deflecting Absence: 9/11 Fiction and the Memorialization of Change,” Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, 18, 2 (2016), 203–21, 217, 218CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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²⁷ Schivelbusch, Wolfgang, The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery, trans. Chase, Jefferson (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003; first published 2001), 294Google Scholar.

²⁸ Bernstein, Richard, The Abuse of Evil: The Corruption of Politics and Religion since 9/11 (Cambridge: Polity, 2005), viii, 15Google Scholar.

²⁹ Pomerantsev. President George W. Bush, “State of the Union Address,” Washington, DC, CNN.com, 29 Jan. 2002, at http://edition.cnn.com/2002/ALLPOLITICS/01/29/bush.speech.txt, accessed 18 May 2018.

³⁰ Butler, Judith, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London and New York: Verso, 2006), 40Google Scholar, quoted in O'Gorman, Daniel, “Empathy after 9/11,” Alluvium, 1, 1 (2012), n.p.Google Scholar, at www.alluvium-journal.org/2012/06/01/empathy-after-911-2, accessed 21 May 2018.

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³³ Morrell, Michael E., Empathy and Democracy: Feeling, Thinking, and Deliberation (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), 2Google Scholar.

³⁴ Ibid., 41, 63.

³⁵ Ibid., 158, 195.

³⁶ Redfield, Marc, The Rhetoric of Terror: Reflections on 9/11 and the War on Terror (New York: Fordham University Press, 2009), 1, 17Google Scholar.

³⁷ Grossman, “Q & A with Amy Waldman.”

³⁸ Redfield, 17–18. In Chile, 11 Sept. 1973 was “the date of Salvador Allende's overthrow in a U.S.-backed coup that ushered in one of the worst reigns of terror in the twentieth century.” See also Simpson, David, 9/11: The Culture of Commemoration (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006), 14Google Scholar.

³⁹ Lawless, “Literature as Anti-Memorial.”

⁴⁰ Jonathan Derbyshire, “The Books Interview: Amy Waldman,” New Statesman, 11 Sept. 2011, at www.newstatesman.com/blogs/cultural-capital/2011/09/novel-submission-memorial-felt, accessed 11 Jan. 2017.

⁴¹ Diane Cardwell, Glenn Collins, Winnie Hu, Andrew Jacobs, Lynda Richardson, Janny Scott, and Joyce Wadler, “Snapshots of Their Lives with Family and at Work,” New York Times, 15 Sept. 2001, at http://movies2.nytimes.com/2001/09/15/nyregion/15MISS.html, accessed 16 Oct. 2018.

⁴² “A Nation Challenged: Portraits of Grief: The Victims,” New York Times, 26 Sept. 2001, at www.nytimes.com/2001/09/26/nyregion/nation-challenged-portraits-grief-victims-providers-friends-shoulders-lean-they.html, 3 Oct. 2001, at www.nytimes.com/2001/10/03/nyregion/nation-challenged-portraits-grief-victims-recalling-laughter-pets-sacrifice.html, 17 Oct. 2001, at www.nytimes.com/2001/10/17/nyregion/nation-challenged-portraits-grief-victims-lighthouse-s-biggest-fan-small-town.html, and 23 Oct. 2001, at www.nytimes.com/2001/10/23/nyregion/nation-challenged-portraits-grief-victims-dream-fulfilled-devoted-father-mother.html, all accessed 12 Jan. 2016.

⁴³ Nancy K. Miller, “‘Portraits of Grief’: Telling Details of the Testimony of Trauma,” differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 14, 3 (2003), 112–35, 114.

⁴⁴ Doss, Memorial Mania, 99.

⁴⁵ “A Nation Challenged,” New York Times, 16 Sept. 2001, 17 Oct. 2001, 3 Oct. 2001, accessed 12 Jan. 2017.

⁴⁶ Doss, 71.

⁴⁷ Scott, Janny, Introduction, Portraits: 9/11/01: The Collected “Portraits of Grief” from the New York Times (New York: Times, 2002), ix–x, ixGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁸ Michael Brick, “Portraitists of Grief: 2,400 lives, each in 200 words or less,” New York Magazine, 27 Aug. 2011, at http://nymag.com/news/9-11/10th-anniversary/portraits-of-grief, accessed 21 Jan. 2016. Brick notes that over 140 reporters, researchers, staff, and editors were assigned to work on the “Portraits of Grief.”

⁴⁹ Doss, 99.

⁵⁰ Ibid.

⁵¹ Miller, 121, 117–18, 120.

⁵² Mark Singer, “Talk of the Town: Grief Desk,” New Yorker, 14 Jan. 2002, 30.

⁵³ Simpson, 9/11, 43, 39, 36, 39.

⁵⁴ Lorentzen, Christian, “Shave for Them,” review of Waldman's, Amy The Submission, London Review of Books, 33, 18 (Sept. 2011), 28–29Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ Jess Row, “What Just Happened? Amy Waldman Takes a Trip into the Uncanny Valley of Ground Zero,” New York Magazine, 31 July 2011, at http://nymag.com/arts/books/reviews/the-submission-2011-8, accessed 29 May 2015.

⁵⁶ Derbyshire, “The Books Interview: Amy Waldman.”

⁵⁷ New York Times, 14 June 2003, at www.nytimes.com/2003/06/14/world/after-the-war-currency-hussein-s-image-is-banned-in-public-except-on-money.html, accessed 1 Oct. 2016.

⁵⁸ New York Times, 30 June 2003, at www.nytimes.com/2003/06/30/world/after-the-war-reconstruction-bremer-says-more-attacks-won-t-deter-the-allies.html, accessed 1 Oct. 2016.

⁵⁹ New York Times, 22 July 2003, at www.nytimes.com/2003/07/22/world/after-the-war-hostilities-the-murders-of-baathists.html, accessed 1 Oct. 2016.

⁶⁰ Jeffrey Richelson, ed., “Update on Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction,” George Washington University National Security Archive, 11 Feb. 2004, at http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB80/press, accessed 17 Oct. 2018. See also Richelson, ed., “Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction,” National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 80, George Washington University National Security Archive, 11 Feb. 2004, at http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB80/press, accessed 17 Oct. 2018. Documents 15, 34, 35, 37, and 41 are particularly useful.

⁶¹ “From the Editors: The Times and Iraq,” New York Times, 26 May 2004, at www.nytimes.com/2004/05/26/world/from-the-editors-the-times-and-iraq.html?_r=0, accessed 15 Sept. 2016.

⁶² National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, The 9/11 Report (New York: St. Martins, 2011; first published 2004), xcvi, cxxvGoogle Scholar.

⁶³ Leggatt, “Deflecting Absence,” 219.

⁶⁴ Young et al., “Virtual Roundtable.”

⁶⁵ Young, “Memory and Monument after 9/11,” 78.

⁶⁶ Ibid., 81.

⁶⁷ Young, “The Memorial's Arc,” 326.

⁶⁸ Debbie Siegelbaum, “Q & A with Michael Arad, Designer of the 9/11 Memorial in NYC,” The Hill, 10 Sept. 2012, at http://thehill.com/capital-living/cover-stories/248613-qaa-with-michael-arad-designer-of-the-911-memorial-in-nyc, accessed 8 Feb. 2018.

⁶⁹ Ibid.

⁷⁰ Ted Loos, “Architect and 9/11 Memorial Both Evolved over the Years,” New York Times, 1 Sept. 2011, at https://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/arts/design/how-the-911-memorial-changed-its-architect-michael-arad.html, accessed 17 May 2017.

⁷¹ Hilker, Anne, “The Comfort of Melancholy: Understanding the Experience of Absence at American Memorials,” Journal of American Culture, 37, 1 (2014), 29–36, 30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷² Ibid., 33.

⁷³ “About the Museum,” National September 11 Memorial and Museum, 2015, at www.911memorial.org/about-museum, accessed 29 Oct. 2015.

⁷⁴ Patricia Cohen, “At Museum on 9/11, Talking through an Identity Crisis,” New York Times, 2 June 2012, at www.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/arts/design/sept-11-memorial-museums-fraught-task-to-tell-the-truth.html, accessed 23 May 2018.

⁷⁵ Leigh, Catesby, “A Memorial to Forget,” First Things, 247 (Nov. 2014), 49–55, 54Google Scholar. See also Nobel, Philip, “Memory Holes,” Metropolis: Architectural Design, 31, 2 (Sept. 2011), 62–107Google Scholar; and Colwell-Chanthaphonh, Chip, “The Disappeared: Power over the Dead in the Aftermath of 9/11,” Anthropology Today, 27, 3 (June 2011), 5–11Google Scholar.

⁷⁶ Sturken, Marita, “The 9/11 Memorial Museum and the Remaking of Ground Zero,” American Quarterly, 67, 2 (June 2015), 471–90, 475CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷⁷ Steve Cuozzo, “New 9/11 Museum Is as Beautiful as It Is Horrific,” New York Post, 15 May 2014, at https://nypost.com/2014/05/15/new-911-museum-is-as-beautiful-as-it-is-horrific, accessed 23 May 2018.

⁷⁸ Cohen.

⁷⁹ Panero, James, “Grounded Zero,” The New Criterion, 33, 1 (Sept. 2014), 51–53, 53Google Scholar. See also Hess, Aaron and Herbig, Art, “Recalling the Ghosts of 9/11: Convergent Memorializing at the Opening of the National 9/11 Memorial,” International Journal of Communication, 7 (2013), 2207–30Google Scholar; and Forest, Benjamin and Johnson, Juliet, “Security and Atonement: Controlling Access to the World Trade Center Memorial,” Cultural Geographies, 20, 3 (2012), 405–11CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸⁰ Waldman, Amy, The Submission (New York: Picador, 2011), 7Google Scholar; future references are made parenthetically in the text.

⁸¹ Young et al., “Virtual Roundtable.”

⁸² Ibid. This debate between families and artists also divided the actual 9/11 memorial jury. See Doss, Erika, “Remembering 9/11: Memorials and Cultural Memory,” Organization of American Historians Magazine of History, 25, 3 (2011), 27–30, 28Google Scholar.

⁸³ Siegelbaum, “Q & A with Michael Arad.”

⁸⁴ Paula Grant Berry et al., “WTC Memorial Jury Statement for Winning Design,” Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, 13 Jan. 2004, at http://wtcsitememorial.org/about_jury_txt.html, accessed 1 June 2018.

⁸⁵ Oliver Wainwright, “9/11 Memorial Museum: An Emotional Underworld beneath Ground Zero,” The Guardian, 14 May 2014, at www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/may/14/9-11-memorial-museum-new-york, accessed 23 May 2018.

⁸⁶ Alexandra Lange, “Up from Zero, the Novel,” Design Observer, 24 Aug. 2011, at http://designobserver.com/feature/up-from-zero-the-novel/29678, accessed 17 May 2017. Lange's question turns attention back to both the 1980 selection of Chinese American juror Maya Lin to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, which the Void explicitly “mimicked” (5), and the 2004 publication of Islam: A Mosaic, Not a Monolith by Iranian-born Armenian American 9/11 memorial jury chair Vartan Gregorian, soon after the jury's choice of Arad and Walker's design. Neither Lin's nor Gregorian's background altered the 9/11 memorial process, but Waldman imagines how easily and harmfully either one might have done so, given the polemical nature of post-9/11 public discourse.

⁸⁷ Rachel Nolan, “Bookforum Interviews Amy Waldman,” Bookforum, 8 Sept. 2011, at www.bookforum.com/interview/8218, accessed 29 May 2015.

⁸⁸ Ibid.

⁸⁹ Ibid.

⁹⁰ “Welcome,” Take Back the Memorial, 1 July 2005, at www.takebackthememorial.net/about.htm, accessed 13 June 2017.

⁹¹ This act was repeated both by copycats in the novel and by angry anti-Muslim protesters in the US and the UK after the attacks.

⁹² Lawless, “Literature as Anti-memorial.”

⁹³ “September 11, 2001 Oral History Projects,” Oral History Archives, Columbia University Libraries, n.d., at http://library.columbia.edu/locations/ccoh/digital/9-11.html, accessed 15 Sept. 2015. I would like to thank the Columbia Center for Oral History for granting me permission to quote briefly from their collection in this essay.

⁹⁴ Clark, “Herodotus Reconsidered,” 80.

⁹⁵ “September 11, 2001 Oral History Projects.”

⁹⁶ The Reminiscences of Dena Kleiman (18 Dec. 2001 and 18 Sept. 2003), “September 11, 2001 Oral History Project” [“9/11 OHP”], Columbia Center for Oral History Archives [CCOHA], Rare Book & Manuscript Library [RBML], Columbia University in the City of New York [Columbia U]; Rem. of Neil Tyson (12 Dec. 2001 and 12 March 2003), “9/11 OHP,” CCOHA, RBML, Columbia U; Rem. of Scott P. Strauss (27 Nov. 2001), “9/11 OHP,” CCOHA, RBML, Columbia U; Rem. of Scott Greenleaf (19 Oct. 2001), “9/11 OHP,” CCOHA, RBML, Columbia U; Rem. of Bernard A. Weinstein (10 Nov. 2001 and 23 June 2003), “9/11 OHP,” CCOHA, RBML, Columbia U; Rem. of Claire Cavanah (19 Oct. 2001 and 23 Nov. 2003), “9/11 OHP,” CCOHA, RBML, Columbia U; Rem. of Art Speigelman (17 May 2005), “9/11 OHP,” CCOHA, RBML, Columbia U; Rem. of Antonio “Chico” Garcia (20 Oct. 2001), “9/11 OHP,” CCOHA, RBML, Columbia U.

⁹⁷ Rem. of Seth Tobocman (5 April 2002), 1, “9/11 OHP,” CCOHA, RBML, Columbia U; Rem. of Howard Rumberg (11 Dec. 2001 and 11 July 2003), 2, “9/11 OHP,” CCOHA, RBML, Columbia U.

⁹⁸ Rem. of Justine Cooper (17 Jan. 2002 and 12 Feb. 2003), 53, “9/11 OHP,” CCOHA, RBML, Columbia U.

⁹⁹ Rem. of Strauss, 32, “9/11 OHP,” CCOHA, RBML, Columbia U.

¹⁰⁰ Rem. of Marc Whalen (23 Oct. 2001 and 12 Jan. 2003), 37–38, “9/11 OHP,” CCOHA, RBML, Columbia U.

¹⁰¹ Ibid., 23 Oct. 2001, 11.

¹⁰² Rem. of Kathleen Spicer (12 Feb. 2002 and 7 May 2003), 17, 41–42, “9/11 OHP,” CCOHA, RBML, Columbia U.

¹⁰³ Rem. of Kleiman (18 Dec. 2001 and 18 Sept. 2003), 25, 9, 43, “9/11 OHP,” CCOHA, RBML, Columbia U.

¹⁰⁴ Lawless, “Literature as Anti-memorial.”

¹⁰⁵ Siegelbaum, “Q & A with Michael Arad.”

¹⁰⁶ Peter Bearman and Mary Marshall Clark, “The September 11, 2001, Oral History Narrative and Memory Project,” proposal, Sept. 2001, quoted in Clark, “Herodotus Reconsidered,” 81.

¹⁰⁷ Ibid.

¹⁰⁸ National Commission, The 9/11 Report, xciv.

¹⁰⁹ Ibid., 608.

¹¹⁰ Farhad Manjoo, “How the Internet Is Loosening Our Grip on the Truth,” New York Times, 2 Nov. 2016, at www.nytimes.com/2016/11/03/technology/how-the-internet-is-loosening-our-grip-on-the-truth.html?_r=0, accessed 2 Nov. 2016.

¹¹¹ Jim Rutenberg, “In Watergate, One Set of Facts. In Trump Era, Take Your Pick,” New York Times, 11 June 2017, at www.nytimes.com/2017/06/11/business/media/comey-trump-watergate.html?_r=0, accessed 13 June 2017.