Post‐9/11 Literary Masculinities in Kalfus, DeLillo, and Hamid

Abstract

In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, much of mainstream media constructed triumphant masculinist narrative of 9/11, a reductive conflation of history, politics, and masculinity, that quickly rubbed off on popular culture. This essay discusses three 9/11 novels that go against the triumphant narrative: Ken Kalfus’s A Disorder Peculiar to the Country (2006), Don DeLillo’s Falling Man (2007), and Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2008). The novels are analyzed in terms of their depiction of masculinities and heroic narrative. In various ways, the three novelists debunk the idealized male hero by presenting male protagonists who constantly fail to live up to the impossible standards expected by a wounded society that has retreated into the safety of a nostalgic past. The novels feature variations on mythic American manhood but also counter‐narratives that suggest another, more complex story, one that deconstructs and reinvents the notion of masculinity in the wake of 9/11.