25 Years

It seemed like yesterday when the towers fell. Everyone who was alive at that moment has/had a September 11th story - where they were, what they were doing. And for several years afterwards the attacks loomed large over everything. Films, documentaries, conspiracy theories. Almost every writer of note, and a few who weren't, were expected to write their own 9-11 novel. There were memorials, official markings, solemn gatherings, minute silences. But then, this seminal moment of our time, a disaster that was as spectacular as anything Hollywood had served up, whose consequences devastated millions of people well beyond the long tail of casualty figures from the day, and utterly inescapable as an event has, weirdly, largely faded away. Old father time could be the culprit. The world has sped up, culture is more fragmented, popular memory isn't what it used to be. You'd have to more or less be in your 30s to have first-hand memory of watching it happen live. And yet, that doesn't really…