9-11 Report: Non-Fiction Thriller?
They say the best non-fiction reads like fiction, and so it is with the 9-11 Commission Report. David Ignatius recommends thinking of it as a thriller:
And deservedly so. For in its meticulous compilation of fact, the report makes the horrors of 9/11 even more shocking. Try to read the story as a narrative, a nonfiction thriller in which the characters move inexorably toward the cataclysm of that cloudless morning. The strength of the report is precisely in its narrative power; by telling all the little stories, it reveals the big story in a different way. We see the bland evil of the plotters, the Hamlet-like indecision of government officials, the bravery amid chaos of the firefighters.
The SF Chronicle‘s David Kipen also looks at the book from a literary point of view, and he says, “This is no thriller (…) The 9-11 report resembles a thriller about as much as life does.”
Washington Post link via Stephany, guesting at Maud.