| In the Shadow of No Towers | |
|---|---|
 Cover of In the Shadow of No Towers Hardcover | |
| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Viking Adult |
| Format | Comic strip Board book |
| Publication date | 2002–2004 |
| Creative team | |
| Created by | Art Spiegelman |
| Collected editions | |
| In the Shadow of No Towers | ISBN 0-670-91541-6 |
In the Shadow of No Towers is a 2004 work of comics by American cartoonist Art Spiegelman. It is about Spiegelman's reaction to the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001. It was originally serialized as a comic strip in the German newspaper Die Zeit from 2002 until 2004, and was collected as an oversized board book in 2004 with early American comic strips as supplementary material.
In 2011, Mode Records released a 5.1 multichannel DVD recording (Mode 236) of Spiegelman's book, including some of his text and artwork in the booklet, with music by Marco Cappelli, and narration by John Turturro and Enzo Salomone.
YouTube Encyclopedic
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In the Shadow of No Towers — From comic book to KU symphony
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Mohammed Fairouz: Symphony No. 4 'In the Shadow of No Towers'
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ANG PLANADONG PAG ATAKE SA TWIN TOWERS NG AMERICA
Transcription
♪ choral KU chant ♪ ♪ symphony music ♪ ♪ symphony music ♪ ♪ symphony music ♪ ♪ symphony music ♪ ♪ symphony music ♪ ♪ symphony music ♪ ♪ symphony music ♪ ♪ symphony music fades out ♪ ♪ solo bassoon mimics dial tone ♪ Mohammed: "In The Shadow of No Towers", the comic book is essentially a point of departure for me, for this piece. ♪ bassoon ♪ It takes inspiration from very detailed aspects of the comic. The first movement captures that one sequence of The New Normal where you see every family basically asleep in front of the TV. In the middle panel, ♪ loud symphony crash ♪ you see them witness the catastrophe. So you get the idea that there’s a possibility that this might lead to a change. ♪ quiet bassoon and then trumpet ♪ In the third panel they go back to the way they were in the first panel but the only thing that has changed is the calendar is replaced by a flag. In terms of the immediate days following the attacks, I think there was a great sense of possibility for us and I think that we really did feel like we would take this opportunity to come together as a human race. We would come together for the common cause of humanity and we imagine that in the days following it that there would be symbols that would proliferate like globes. And then we saw really provincial symbols start to come up and then we started getting scared. ♪ trumpet fade out ♪ The second movement is called Notes of a Heart Broken Narcissist and it sort of is a small panel in gray scale and to sort of mimic the use of gray scale, I use just the percussion and the piano and the double bass. I don’t use all the colors of the wind ensemble like I did in the first movement. And what you hear in that movement at the very beginning is quite literally the scraping of metal and steel. It’s a very, very eerie sound. ♪ cymbal scrape ♪ That’s achieved with the symbols as you saw scraping their instruments with a coin. In a way that movement is really, really introspective. It’s an elegy. ♪ bass fades out ♪ ♪ abrupt horns ♪ I don’t know if this has ever been done... ♪ abrupt horns ♪ ...but I decided to write for two wind ensembles at once: The United Red Zone of America and The United Blue Zone of America. And they’re sort of pitted against each other and this is inspired by a detail in the comic on the polarization between red states and blue states. So you have, in the book, you have a group of urban dwelling people coming at a group of basically rural background type people and the sort of idea that these two sides are going to clash. ♪ grandiose band music ♪ It’s basically like being divided into two countries. That movement is really a political satire. Both sides sound…in my piece… sound equally ridiculous, childish. And it’s really convenient for two reasons that I’m writing for wind ensemble because this is, first of all, a uniquely American medium and secondly it’s a medium where it has a history of patriotic music and marching band music. ♪ grandiose end ♪ ♪ tick tock wood block ♪ The fourth movement, the finale, is called Anniversaries and it’s about the passing of time. The movement starts with the ticking of a clock at quarter note equals 60 which is what the clock ticks at. ♪ solo saxophone begins ♪ That continues throughout the movement. It grows larger and larger and larger. ♪ symphony crescendo ♪ ♪ symphony music ♪ And what Art says in the comic is the towers have come to, with every year they get larger. They loom larger than life. ♪ symphony music ♪ With every anniversary, the towers attain this sort of mythic status in our imagination. and we move further and further away from the realities of life and death on that day. From being worried for your friends, from being confused, concerned, hurt. ♪ symphony music ♪ ♪ symphony music ♪ All of those human emotions sort of drift into the background and more and more of this becomes a cultural thing. A cause that we’re using for all sorts of different purposes. ♪ symphony music ♪ ♪ symphony music ♪ ♪ symphony music ♪ ♪ symphony music ♪ ♪ symphony music ♪ ♪ symphony music ♪ ♪ symphony crescendo ♪ ♪ symphony crescendo ♪ ♪ symphony crescendo ♪ ♪ symphony fades out ♪
Overview
The book evolved from Spiegelman's experiences during the September 11 terrorist attacks. Spiegelman has said that the book was a way to reclaim himself from the post-traumatic stress disorder he suffered after the attacks.
It also has many references to Spiegelman's Maus comics, for example one in which Art said that the smoke in Manhattan smelled just like Vladek said the smoke in the concentration camps smelled. Also he often turns himself into a mouse on the fly.
It was published by the German newspaper Die Zeit after Spiegelman was unable to secure publication in any major American outlet. In Britain, excerpts were published in The Independent. The comic was serialised in full in the London Review of Books from March-September 2003. A segment also appeared in 2004 as part of the Actus Tragicus comics album Dead Herring Comics.
In 2004, the series of ten strips and a supplement of reprints of turn-of-the-20th-century comic strips such as The Katzenjammer Kids and The Yellow Kid were collected and published together as a book by Viking Books. In the Shadow of No Towers was selected by The New York Times as one of the 100 Notable Books of 2004.[1]
In popular culture
In the Shadow of No Towers is the inspiration for a symphony by Mohammed Fairouz.[2]
See also
References
- ^ Special Guests. Reed Exhibitions. 2009. p. 16.
{{cite book}}:|work=ignored (help) - ^ Fairouz, Mohammed. "Biography". Archived from the original on April 25, 2012. Retrieved June 28, 2012.
- Sanderson, Peter (Oct 22, 2004). "Comics in Context #59: Before the Fall". IGN. Archived from the original on July 13, 2011.
- Sanderson, Peter (Oct 29, 2004). "Comics in Context #60: The Day That Time Stood Still". IGN.
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