In the days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, makeshift memorials started to appear around the perimeter of Ground Zero and at sites around the world associated with the United States. The assemblages of photographs, drawings, magazine clippings, flowers, poetry, teddy bears, and Lady Liberty key chains can be thought of as the first artistic responses to 9/11, the work of people channeling their immediate emotional reaction through whatever was at hand. Relatives and friends of the missing covered walls in the Times Square subway station with posters made in every conceivable style. ...
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Hari Kunzru is a novelist and journalist.