Rumsfield as Stein

The narrator of The Writing on the Wall, Lynne Sharon Schwartz’s novel about 9/11, includes bits and pieces of mid-September speechfiying, as a kind of background blather. At one point the two main characters see and hear Donald Rumsfield on TV saying this: What this war is about is our way of life, and our way of life is worth losing lives for. After hearing this, Schwartz's narrator (Renata) thinks: "The secretary of defense, channeling Gertrude Stein." Not fair to Stein, but very funny nevertheless.