I finished Richard Powers’ Operation Wandering Soul the day of the Attack. He writes about trying to teach his writing class at the University of Illinois on that day.
The dayís topic was to have been figurative speech: metaphor and simile in fiction. On my way out the door, I saw the first headlines. Then the images and the repeating, unreal film. And every possible class lesson disappeared in that plume.
P.S. — In researching his most recent novel, Plowing the Dark, Powers interviewed many westerners who were held hostage in Beruit during the 1980’s.
