Orange Terrorist alert justified

I finished reading John Updike's 2006 novel Terrorist this afternoon. After acknowledging five days ago Christopher Hitchens's Orange Alert that Terrorist might be "one of the worst pieces of writing from any grown-up source since the events he has so unwisely tried to draw upon," I was actually hoping that it would turn out to have been a false alarm. I hoped that John Updike, ill or not, could still have written an excellent and entertaining book. I mentally readied myself to conjecture how Mr. Hitchens could have got it wrong. He was deficient somehow when it came to literary criticism. And why was that? I prepared to adjust my uniformly high opinion of his judgment.

Terrorist (2006: John Updike) [Fatherless eighteen-year-old Ahmad—half Irish, half Egyptian—has been under the influence of imam Shaikh Rashid since he was eleven. Ahmad's Jewish guidance counselor in his inner-city New Jersey high school offers help, but Ahmad agrees to commit violence for his religious beliefs] 05-2012

My high opinion of Christopher Hitchens remains intact.
    Terrorist portrays aging Jewish guidance counselor Jack Levy convincingly, as I hoped I showed by my excerpts. But his young would-be terrorist Ahmad is a clichéd, one-dimensional acolyte, extensively indoctrinated in the Koran and continually reminding himself that he is supposed to abhor sex and hate America and Americans. He shows little sign of being a New Jersey teenager.
    New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani (in "John Updike's Terrorist Imagines a Homegrown Threat to Homeland Security," June 6, 2006) seems to absolve Updike for this character by suggesting that "the reader cannot help suspecting that Mr. Updike found the idea of such a person so incomprehensible that he at some point abandoned any earnest attempt to depict his inner life and settled instead for giving us a static, one-dimensional stereotype."
    That's tepid absolution, which I don't think Mr. Updike would have been happy to acknowledge. But it's possible. How does one comprehend a jihadist? Updike may have been determined to write something pertinent to 9/11 despite simply not being well-suited to undertake that particular subject. This can only be spectulation, and unprofitable.

But the plotting. Surely Updike could have done better than concoct a plot with more convenient coincidences than a 43-minute made-for-TV special? Levy, Ahmad's guidance counselor, happens to have an affair with  Ahmad's  mother. Levy's wife's sister happens to work for the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. The secretary happens to suspect that a terrorist plot is hatching in the town where Ahmad and his assistant's sister happen to live. The secretary's assistant happens to speak frequently with her sister, who happens to tell her about this Arab kid her husband the guidance counselor has been trying to persuade to go on to college rather than become a licensed truck driver....
     Isn't it about time for another commercial?

Now back to reading Physics for Future Presidents, which among other things "presents the science behind terrorism...."

Physics for Future Presidents: The Science behind the Headlines (2008: Richard A. Muller) [Physics professor explains basic physics to help government leaders and their constituents make better decisions about issues they face. Presents the science behind terrorism, energy, nuclear weapons and power, space and satellites, and global warming. Debates the future of alternative eco-friendly resources and new technologies.]

    Terror, terror, terror—terrorism everywhere. Not frequently orange anymore, but there in static white noise everyday of our lives.