On the Sound of Sirens

Sometimes after a city is attacked some people want to leave and others want to stay. Those who want to leave aren't necessarily scared, it may be a reprioritising of what's important. Those who decide to stay aren't necessarily the bravest, they may just be the most obdurate or just those who hate having others threaten their existence. It's difficult to predict which people will want to stay and which people will want to go. Here Jay McInerney writes on being in New York city after 9/11

Whether or not to leave had become a mainstay of Manhattan discourse in the last week. He and Corrine had discussed it, of course, and while they hadn't come to any conclusions, it seemed their positions in this debate had reversed. For years, she'd brought it up routinely, whereas his stock answer had always been that John Cheever might still be alive and well if he'd just stayed put in Manhattan. But these past few days, she'd surprised him by expressing a desire to cast her lot with the city, even as she acknowledged that they had to think of the kids - she who had never seemed quite comfortable calling New York home, who could never stop using the word house when she really meant apartment.

It's an extract from his new book "The Good Life".