I don't know if it's some childhood image left over from Victory at Sea or from a book of pictures my uncle brought back from the service, but when I think about the war in the Pacific, I see pink cumulus clouds piled high, one upon another, on the decks of aircraft carriers. It's not the iconic image of violent battle that usually represents the war, but my imagination seems to be telling me that the iconic images aren't the whole story, that serenity and beauty coexisted alongside the bloodshed and were a large part of the day-to-day reality of the war.

It's for similar reasons that I think the nitty-gritty details of life near Ground Zero as presented in one of the first theatrical responses to 9/11, comic monologist Reno's Rebel Without a Pause, appeal to me so. They provide relief from the media's iconic packaging, which has been beamed at us ever since the attack on the Trade Towers and the (rarely mentioned) Pentagon attack.

With a deluge of energy, Reno, who lived near the towers from 1981, relates what it was like in lower Manhattan "that gorgeous day." She recreates the clicking sound, like the noise an old machine gun would make, that was the sound of the floors collapsing into one another. She exhibits dismay at the total absence of Conelrad and the Emergency Defense System. ("Maybe this wasn't enough of an emergency.") She tells a story about finding her ATM emptied out at 9 am and the bank refusing to open its doors so customers could get their money.

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