The Art of the Bomb

I really liked your post's mix of close reading (the alliteration), good old-fashioned literary knowledge (the Syme in 1984), and thoughtful reaction. I'm going to have to pay more attention to Chesterton's style; if I can pick up his little habits - like the alliteration - I might find his style less irksome. Of course, maybe I'll just plain get used to it, too.

The list of great lines in your post reminded me of that really striking statement by Gregory: "The man who throws a bomb is an artist, because he prefers a great moment to everything." I had to put the book down, when I reached that line, and hit Google to hunt for the infamous quotes along those lines about 9/11. The prefiguring is incredible:

British visual artist Damien Hirst: "The thing about 9/11 is that it's kind of an artwork in its own right. It was wicked, but it was devised in this way for this kind of impact. It was devised visually."

German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, talking about 9/11 five days later:

Well, what happened there is, of course—now all of you must adjust your brains—the biggest work of art there has ever been. The fact that spirits achieve with one act something which we in music could never dream of, that people practise ten years madly, fanatically for a concert. And then die. [Hesitantly.] And that is the greatest work of art that exists for the whole Cosmos. Just imagine what happened there. There are people who are so concentrated on this single performance, and then five thousand people are driven to Resurrection. In one moment. I couldn't do that. Compared to that, we are nothing, as composers. [...] It is a crime, you know of course, because the people did not agree to it. They did not come to the "concert". That is obvious. And nobody had told them: "You could be killed in the process."

Amazing. I wonder how long this trope of terrorist violence as art has existed...