The Weatherman Temptation

The National Book Award nomination in October for Eat the Document, a novel about the Weather Underground by Dana Spiotta, came at a time when several other strong novels addressed similar themes. Russell Banks's The Darling, Susan Choi's American Woman, and Neil Gordon's The Company You Keep, alongside Eat the Document, suggest a renewed interest in imagining what we might call "the Weatherman temptation." It arises when young activists are drawn toward violent tactics, out of despair for democracy—especially in the early seventies, when the Vietnam War seemed endless—and maybe again today, when the Iraq War and the war on terror also seem endless.