“Inverted arches of triumph, sinister Taj Majals”

I am startled to learn, via Unbeige, that Herbert Muschamp has died. Here is the obituary. Unbeige’s post suggests a trip to the Times archive to “curate your own Muschamp tribute,” a suggestion I would normally ignore. But I have admired his writing many times (I never met him; by the time I was around the NYT, I’d decided that it’s sometimes better for me to never meet my writing heroes), and there’s one piece in particular that has stuck with me for, wow, 14 years now.

It’s this one, from 1993, the year of the bomb attack on the World Trade Center that failed to bring it down but that was, trust me, pretty unnerving just the same. I was young and newish to New York at the time, but I don’t think I was the only one who felt that way.

We all know that a society’s tallest buildings — the ones that are most easily seen by the most people — reveal what’s that society revolves around: In one era it’s churches, in another palaces, in another, corporate HQs. This essay was headlined “Things Generally Wrong In The Universe,” and in a way it made a case that the tallest building had become the the one that is exploding. That’s the one we all see.

Of course I’m not able to say what he did as well as he did and my clumsy interpretation is probably a disservice, so here’s a passage:

Exploding buildings are this community’s landmarks — its inverted arches of triumph, its sinister Taj Mahals. They provide images of a collective experience that is otherwise elusive. Traditionally, we look to buildings to provide symbols of social cohesion. Exploding buildings now perform an equivalent symbolic role. People may build in different styles, but explosions are universal. Though each may have a different cause, they become linked in our perceptions to some fearful grand design. They focus public attention. They fill up TV screens. The World Trade Center bombing spawned a new style of disaster T-shirt.

Maybe it’s better to just link.