The disillusionment novel’s inward turn replaces adventure with the risk of solipsism

Evidence

At the eye of the storm are the three main characters, whose deliberations and motives tend to be rendered in more detail and are mixed and often contradictory. The wealthy liberal widow Claire Burwell is the 9/11 families’ representative on the judging panel. She begins as a trenchant supporter of Khan and his design but begins to have doubts as the architect digs his heels in and avoids answering his critics’ suspicions and the charges made against him. Mo Khan himself is a westernized, secular rising star of architecture who wins the contest but then refuses to explain the meaning and symbolism of his design or to withdraw it despite mounting opposition. At the other end of the social scale is Asma Anwar, wife of a Bangladeshi illegal immigrant killed in the Twin Towers who briefly becomes a cause célèbre when she shakes off the shackles of her gender to speak out on behalf of ordinary Muslims during a public inquiry into Khan’s design. — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 276 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The modern novel shifts the hero’s dominant relation to reality from space to time — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 364; The novel makes ambiguity of motive its core dramatic engine — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 276; Novelistic protagonists need not pursue individual fulfillment to be compelling (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Twentieth-century serious fiction turned inward toward the psychological #corroborates (0.85)
• Novelistic protagonists need not pursue individual fulfillment to be compelling #complicates (0.78)
• The novel makes ambiguity of motive its core dramatic engine #expands (0.75) — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 276
• A novel’s symbolic claims can exceed the terms that render its characters coherent #expands (0.72) — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory, 250