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The Shell Game
a novel by Steve Alten
reviewed by Richard McGinn
The Shell Game is a good read which I recommend to everyone. Its precise classification may be a matter of importance for potential readers drawn from the so-called 9/11 Truth Community. Not quite a roman a clef, not quite a fictionalized ‘people’s history’ in the tradition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Max Havilaar, The Shell Game is more ambitious; it attempts to present a theory of history and the future in the tradition of Ann Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and George Orwell’s 1984.
The Shell Game’s temporal scope is the first dozen years of the 21st century; its centerpiece is the series of attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001. The “now” of the novel includes the presidential campaign of 2012; the climax of the novel (I won’t tell you how it turns out) is a patsy-executed, government-orchestrated, plan to launch a nuclear attack on Los Angeles and Chicago as prelude to declaration of martial law, cancellation of the 2012 elections, and the end of America-as-we-know-it.
Read exclusively for its references to and treatment of the historical events of 9/11, The Shell Game becomes merely a roman a clef, meaning that its value derives less from the roman than the clef—the real-life events to which the novel is supposed to provide the “key”. But such a reading misses an important point. It implies, quite narrowly, that fiction has no place in serious discourse about 9/11, which ought to be exclusively about “scientific truth” with respect to the buildings, the planes (or their phantoms), the passengers, the alleged hijackers, the intelligence failures, the cover-up, and the suspected perpetrators in the government or the shadow government. This raises a serious question about where “the truth about 9/11” rightfully belongs in the universe of discourse. Does “truth” imply only science? Or can we see into the sun with an understanding, like D. H. Lawrence, that it is more than a ball of flaming gases?
The Shell Game places this question in sharp relief. As a work of fiction, its first imperative is to tell a coherent story. But as everyone knows, the 9/11 Truth Movement presents not a single, coherent narrative, but a range of probable ones. This leaves only two possible paths open to authors hoping to succeed in the genre of fiction about the central event of contemporary history: they must either select a coherent sub-set of narratives from among the many that are currently bubbling up out of the 9/11 Truth Movement; or they must create their own. Steve Alten has chosen the former path. He leans heavily on Michael Ruppert’s approach, which is distinguished for its de-emphasis on “what happened” forensically on 9/11, and for its corresponding emphasis on the motive (Peak Oil hypothesis) and the post-event cover-up, relying largely on public records. Likewise The Shell Game draws on public records which powerfully enable the reader to imagine the possibility that 9/11 was an inside job; that the perpetrators acted consistently for a variety of motives; and that they did it mostly in the open. Some of the most riveting parts of the novel are direct quotes from Bush, Cheney, and newspaper accounts from 2001, appearing before any politicized “official” narrative had taken hold in the public’s collective imagination.
As a fiction writer, Alten is answerable to (and cannot escape from, on pain of failure as a writer) a combination of restricting and empowering literary values. How does one evaluate the literary value of a work? In part, by its success! If everyone reading The Shell Game enjoys it and recommends it to family and friends, then everyone will be exposed to the possibility that 9/11 was an inside job. Those who do not believe that 9/11 was an inside job can pass it on to others who do; after all, it is “just” a novel. This story cannot be dismissed as “conspiracy theory”—because it is not a theory but a work of fiction. A page turner. A good read.
