Suspense, Wonder, and Indirect Addresses to Loss

Abstract

Early on a balmy morning in downtown Manhattan, a group of people on the street find their attention directed upward to the World Trade Center towers. They squint and gasp, but they are not watching an instantaneous explosion. Rather, they are suddenly noticing a tiny silhouette walking a wire tied between the tops of the two buildings. It is 1974, not 2001, and they are gasping with delight. The figure is Philippe Petit, a French tightrope walker who conspired to pull off this stunt unbeknownst to any authorities until he was spotted suspended and practically floating 107 stories above ground, staying there for nearly an hour. His scheme is depicted in Man on Wire, a documentary film that, though released in 2008, does not discuss or describe the terrorist attacks on the buildings. The film, interspersing footage of the many stages of the 1969–1970 construction of the towers with footage of the actual stunt and interviews of Petit and his accomplices, also playfully reenacts Petit’s fantastical and arrogant retelling of the story: his childhood dream of “conquering the towers” (a dream initiated before the towers were even built), his cavalier stealth, and superhuman agility.

The first imperative of paranoia is There must be no bad surprises.

—Eve Sedgwick, Touching Feeling, 130