David Foster Wallace on 9/11, as Seen from the Midwest

This essay, by the late novelist David Foster Wallace , appeared in the Oct. 25, 2001, issue of Rolling Stone.

Location: Bloomington, IL Dates: 11-13 Sept. 2001 Subject: Obvious Caveat: Written very fast and in what probably qualifies as shock

In true Midwest fashion, Bloomingtonians aren’t unfriendly but do tend to be reserved. A stranger will smile warmly at you, but there normally won’t be any of that strangerly chitchat in waiting areas or checkout lines. But now there’s something to talk about that outweighs all reserve, like we were somehow all standing right there and just saw the same traffic accident. E.g., overheard in the checkout line at Burwell’s (which is sort of the Neiman Marcus of gas station/convenience store plazas – centrally located athwart both one-way main drags, and with the best tobacco prices in town, it’s a municipal treasure) between a lady in an Osco cashier’s smock and a man in a dungaree jacket cut off at the shoulders to make a sort of homemade vest: “With my boys they thought it was all some movie like that Independence Day til then after a while they started to notice it was the same movie on all the channels.” (The lady didn’t say how old her boys were.)

Everybody has flags out. Homes, businesses. It’s odd: You never see anybody putting out a flag, but by Wednesday morning there they all are. Big flags, small flags, regular flag-size flags. A lot of home-owners here have those special angled flag-holders by their front door, the kind whose brace takes four Phillips screws. And thousands of those little hand-held flags-on-a-stick you normally see at parades – some yards have dozens all over as if they’d somehow sprouted overnight. Rural-road people attach the little flags to their mailboxes out by the street. Some cars have them wedged in their grille or duct-taped to the antenna. Some upscale people have actual poles; their flags are at half-mast. More than a few large homes around Franklin Park or out on the east side even have enormous multistory flags hanging gonfalon-style down over their facades. It’s a total mystery where people get flags this big or how they got them up there.

My own next-door neighbor, a retired CPA and vet whose home- and lawn-care are nothing short of phenomenal, has a regulation-size anodized flagpole secured in 18″ of reinforced cement that none of the other neighbors like very much because they think it draws lightning. He says there’s a very particular etiquette to having your flag at half-mast: You’re supposed to first run it all the way up to the top and then bring it halfway down. Otherwise it’s an insult or something. His flag is out straight and popping smartly in the wind. It’s far and away the biggest flag on our street. You can also hear the wind in the cornfields just south; it sounds the way light surf sounds when you’re two dunes back from it. Mr. N–’s flag’s halyard has metal elements that clank loudly against the pole when it’s windy, which is something else the other neighbors don’t care for.