[In the following essay, Chabries discusses the significance of writers and fiction in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks.]

Last month I faced the task, as did countless teachers across the country, of teaching in the wake of September 11's terrorist attacks. I would have preferred to cancel class, to relieve both myself and my students of the burdens of coping: coping with the terrors and losses left in the wake of Tuesday's events, and coping with a discussion of those events in a public space with people who were still mostly unknown. But I also felt compelled to teach, not only because students have paid good money for me to show up, but also because I hate feeling cowardly.

Unwilling to cancel class, I nonetheless dreaded going to class and letting my students vent—er, discuss—their feelings and responses in some kind of therapy session. Neither did I want to pretend to my students that the events of September 11 hadn't touched us, a university class of beginning creative writers, some 1,000 miles away. Above all, I couldn't bear the thought of talking about the art of writing fiction at a time when fiction seemed so frivolous.

On this particular day, my students and I would be meeting for only the second time. It's true that we already seemed to like one another: The previous week we had introduced ourselves with impromptu poems, breaking the social ice of first-day class with jokes, humor, and shared food. Still, none of us knew much about anyone else, and I was unwilling to act as if Tuesday's catastrophes had somehow forged a bond of knowledge and compassion among what was, essentially, a group of strangers.

I presented this dilemma to my students as I opened class. My voice broke. Many of them looked away; one student picked up his pen and began doodling in the corner of his folder, perhaps in preparation for the boredom of class discussion, perhaps as a mask for other anxieties. Speaking of Tuesday's events, I borrowed language from the news media and politicians, telling my students that, as a country, we faced something monumental. Speaking of that day's class activities, I borrowed language from aesthetics and theoreticians, telling my students that, as a class, we faced a famous, historic, and sorrowful dilemma.

I quoted Theodor Adorno to them—poetry is barbaric after Auschwitz—and summarized for them two common interpretations: one, that after such horrors beauty is unimaginable, unbearable; and two, that after such horrors the work—the effects, the function—of art must change. We talked briefly about the work that art can do. I told them that art requires an audience that comes to terms with it in some way, and that the act of coming to terms—especially when it results in turning away, or complacency, or forgetfulness, or simply feeling better—is what can be barbaric. My students nodded. One wept.

In this context, I posed the following question: What did they feel were their responsibilities, as writers and artists, to Tuesday's events? It was a hard question. They looked panicked, caught off guard. I told them to take their time. The room fell silent. By my watch, it stayed silent for 56 seconds. In a way, I think now, it was our own minute of respect for the dead. But it was also a moment of respect for the fact that we live.

My students rose to the occasion of the difficult question I'd put to them and tackled the long-standing, unresolvable debate about the nature of aesthetics. They debated the responsibilities of news coverage and the media's insistence on feeding us such horrifying pictures—the soon-to-be-dead jumping from buildings, the still-living covered in ashes and blood. Some students believed the news media have a responsibility to air those images, even over and over again; others wanted to hold the media responsible—culpable—for turning us into spectators of horror. How much are the media accountable for our acts of spectatorship?, the students asked one another. Is television news an art form, sharing art's social responsibilities? Is it more than the sum of its technically, and technologically, artistic parts? Or should we forgive script, narrative, dialogue, and visual image their role in tragedy? In this tragedy?

Even worse, students asked, does what they called the sensational, blockbuster nature of Tuesday's coverage mean that the media are whoring art (as one student put it)? Is it at all appropriate to call the news an art form just because it uses some of art's tools? Or do journalists use artistic elements (writing, photography, and other forms of image-making) to make nonart? The students began to find it difficult to make a clear distinction between the news, which they called objective reporting of fact, and art, which they defined as more personal, subjective. If the news is art, one student asked, then aren't the news media responsible to us in the same way that an artist is? But what, another student asked pointedly, do we even mean by responsibility? To whom are artists responsible? Why? For what?

The conversational shift to the role of artists turned quickly into a conversation about artists' emotions and perceptions. Most students agreed that some pieces of art were too personal to be shared. I expect responses like that from young writers, from smart students who like to write for themselves and who haven't yet learned all the ways that art requires an audience to really come alive. What I didn't expect was one student's point that if we were going to call television news an art form, and if we were going to agree that artists' emotions are an important component in creating art, then we might do well to think about those artists who had to produce the news coverage: the grips, the camera people, the on-the-scene reporters who, because their jobs entail producing art, were brought face to face with unimaginable human actions and unthinkable human costs. For what were they responsible? How could we distinguish between doing one's job and reporting facts, and turning facts into art?

Gradually, our conversation about art and artists' responsibilities turned toward a discussion of the students' homework, a short fiction exercise in writing concrete detail. (They had received the assignment five days before the terrorist attacks, and some students had completed it even before the morning of the 11th.) Students were visibly relieved to quit talking about death, and eagerly launched into animated descriptions of the difficult work of bringing to life events, scenes, and people without resorting to metaphor or simile. They sought verification from each other, forging a community through their own small struggles: Can you believe how long it took to write two pages? Isn't it difficult to convey engaging information only through detail? Did you also find this assignment unreasonably hard? Are you like me—unsure that you did this right?

Not surprisingly, they related their grappling with details in their own writing to what was unfolding in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania, concluding that you can't write about what you don't know: You either have to see something with your physical eyes or with your mind's eye to convey it effectively. Pictures can't do their work without showing detail. Without detail, writers can't reach their audience. Without detail—no matter how unbearable—the art of writing ceases to be.

When I asked my group of young creative writers if their new-found knowledge about detail changed whether, and how, they felt socially responsible for Tuesday's events, a hush fell over the room, which, moments before, had been charged with energy and enthusiasm. This time they were quiet not because they faced a difficult question, but because writing had helped them see something new. Is it possible, mused one student, for writers to write in order to help people not forget? Is it possible, I countered, to write in order to reject complacency and false optimism? One student wanted to know how their stories will be judged if they use detail to pull in their readers, but refuse to let their readers feel better. What, and how, will the students have to write in order to be called good writers? To have their stories called good fiction? What will their readers want from them?

I don't know I do know, that because of September 11, 2001, fiction will change. I'm not sure how—what it will become, or how it will make us feel. But my students are now part of this change. For the rest of the semester—and for some, for the rest of their lives—they will create fiction that is responsible to a world that exists after terror, to a world that thinks differently of detailed imagery, to a world damaged, some would say, by complacency and forgetfulness.

What do I expect from these students and their writing? The bittersweet promise of a new genre? A radically revised idea about what makes good writing? Not yet. Right now, what I want most is the chance to ask them, about every sketch and story they write, the most urgent question fiction writers now face: “How are you shaping the future of fiction?”