« It’s about being connected »: il est sept heures, New York s’éveille: Let the Great World Spin de Colum McCann ou la coïncidence entre un homme et une ville

Abstract

In Let the Great World Spin coincidence is structural: the choral novel rests on a complex network of plots, echoes and reflections hinging on the performance of a tightrope walker who, on 7 August 1974, crosses from the top of one of the brand new Twin Towers to the other. Reading Let the Great World Spin, one is bound to superimpose the birth of the towers in 1974, which the tightrope walker celebrates, and their destruction in 2001, especially since McCann creates the haunting figure of a falling man at the very heart of his text, as a mirrored and reversed image of the skywalking acrobat. Little by little a map of New York appears, on which the shadow of the upper and cloudy plot adds to the various wanderings of the down-to-earth characters burdened with their painful existence. The characters move along two vertical and parallel lines which recall the towers themselves, and their destinies intersect in different points, thus reflecting this magical hour during which a man’s cloudwalk managed to draw a hyphen in the city’s skyline.

Keywords

• Let the Great World Spin
• 9/11
• choral novel
• coincidence
• New York
• map