Boyett, Steven R. Ariel. New York: Ace Books, 2009. 411-412.
Ariel was written at a time and in a world in which the towers existed. A world, in fact, in which the towers had been constructed relatively recently.
Since that time, of course, the World Trade Center has become much more than that, and will remain so—in the American national consciousness, at least—for generations. A great deal has been written about what that loss means. I am not here to add to it but to discuss why I feel it is wrong to retrofit an old novel to suit events subsequent and irrelevant to its birth.
To be honest I’m not comfortable addressing the issue at all. I do not want to be perceived as trying to ride a small novel on a shock wave of national tragedy. I address the issue here only because—precisely because—the fall of the towers has become so iconic that a failure to address it would also seem to stand out, by omission.
In Ariel the World Trade Center isn’t a symbol or a tragedy or a metaphor. The biggest onus its author placed on it was as a pointed reference and contrast to The Lord of the Rings. When the film version of The Two Towers was released there was discussion of changing the title. To New Line Cinema’s credit, their reasons for not changing the title were largely the same ones I am giving for not revising Ariel to accommodate history: it was written before those events, and it isn’t about them.
I also feel that to revise the implicit history contained in any form of art is an act of capitulation—in this case, to the very people who brought the towers down.
* Reproduced for personal use without express permission. Paragraph breaks substituted for indentations.
