Was this a book whose idea was born on 9/11, or was there something afterward that inspired you?
John Updike: I was in New York and saw one of the towers collapse, so that gave me a sense of witness to the beginning of a new era, in a way, that the administration calls "the War on Terror." But no, I did not think of this novel until some years later. The notion, of course, of there being a lot to say in this area is something just reading the newspapers gives you. I'm surprised, in fact, that the title hasn't already been taken by a number of other people. Everyday you read about terrorism of one kind or another.
What do you see as the role of the novelist when approaching a cultural phenomenon like terrorism and a dramatic historical event like 9/11 and its effects?
JU: You show how it trickles down into ordinary lives, I suppose, which journalism can also do. But the fiction writer has the opportunity to make sympathetic a variety of viewpoints and in the case of this novel to explore the mentality of one terrorist, one idealistic and somewhat confused young man who is led into a plot. That what's the fiction writer can uniquely do: deal with the otherwise uncelebrated, average, daily, ordinary lives that go on in a new atmosphere.
There's been so much writing about 9/11 itself, and I think it's hard to know where the fiction writer can add much. I'm not writing about that; I'm writing about the possibility of something new on a similar scale that could happen. As has been said more than once, they only need to succeed once out of a hundred tries. If 99 are frustrated, that still leaves the one that gets through, and they can do a lot of damage.
You've written from an Islamic point of view critical of the United States before, in The Coup. How much of that experience did you draw on for this book, and what was different this time?
JU: Of course it was a different world in a way. The Coup was about global politics. There was the Soviet Union to consider, and it was about the position of the Third World while the Cold War was going on. But yes, I did read the Quran for that book and I did portray an African dictator a little like Colonel Qadhafi of Libya, who spouted a lot of anti-American rhetoric. So when I came to write this some years later, I had to refresh my memory of the Quran.
But Ahmad is an 18-year-old high-school student who has absorbed other people's rhetoric, whereas Colonel Ellellou in The Coup was a self-invented, semi-American man. There were many differences, and I think in a way this novel tries to construct an American city of an unsung but real sort and give some range of character across the environment, from the school guidance counselor to the single mother to the kids who don't have much of a prospect in a city called, ironically, New Prospect.
How much of Ahmad's worldview was shaped by the Quran?
JU: The Quran is in some ways a beautiful book with beautiful quotes in it. It's a little like the Old Testament in that it's a mixture of poetry and prophecy and dogma. One reads it now with an eye toward how much violence toward unbelievers does it encourage, and what does it say about suicide even in a noble cause? I found there was quite a lot of violence in it and that the insurgents and terrorists do have some texts to quote, but I wouldn't say that's all that's in the Quran. There's quite a lot of moderation also.
Mohammed was special among founders of world religion in that he did have to actually govern. After being chased from Mecca, he set up a government in Medina, and a lot of the early books of the Quran deal with how to govern and how to enforce justice. So this link between government and religion, which in this country they tried to sever, is terribly alive to the Islamic tradition and accounts, I think, for the amount of theocracy and the amount of rule by clergy.
In the end I was aware of Ahmad as being a student of the Quran, but he's not a creature entirely of the Quran. He has other influences, I mean he is living in an American environment and going to an American school.
Ahmad's father, who disappeared when he was 3, is Egyptian, but his mother is of Irish descent. How did you use this to develop his character?
JU: I had to try to think of who would convert himself to Islam and find such value in Islam outside of his immediate heritage. Having an absentee Egyptian father, he longs for the father's presence and tries to find a sort of father in his Islamic piety.
As for the mother, I figured that northern New Jersey is full of people of various ethnic backgrounds. It's an American place, and immigrants old and new mingle here and are aware of each other. Why these particular parents? The father being Muslim was important to Ahmad's construction of himself as a Muslim.
What's your view on our foreign policy in the Middle East right now, the situation in Iraq and with Iran?
JU: It's hard to be optimistic about it, isn't it? It seemed to me at the time that deposing Saddam Hussein was possibly a good idea, but three years later you have people wishing Saddam Hussein would come back. And of course there are many writers who still say things are going much better in Iraq than makes the headlines. But the headlines do not make you hopeful or happy. With regard to Iran, at least we seem to be in step with Western Europe and the other major powers. I don't think there will be the go-it-alone or go-it-alone-with-Tony-Blair philosophy that obtained in Iraq.
It might seem a departure for John Updike, who is most commonly associated with the Protestant Middle America he explored in his celebrated Rabbit series, to strike out into the mind of a fledgling extremist born of a broken home in a decaying New Jersey industrial town. His latest book, 