ABSTRACT
In 2001, Ian McEwan powerfully addressed the emotional politics of September 11 and its sublime aesthetics of pity and fear in two Guardian articles exploring the universal grammar of affect mobilized to shore up faith in ethical bonding and common humanity in the face of the paradigm-shifting, cinematic scenario of the attack on the US. Focusing on the last words and disembodied love messages of the men and women who were soon to die in the collapse of the Twin Towers or the hijacked planes, and refl ecting on the “nature of empathy,” he famously wrote: “Imagining what it is like to be someone other than yourself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion, and it is the beginning of morality” (“Only Love”).
