We all have 9/11 stories. Ask one of your co-workers or talk to one of your fellow students. They will tell you where they were, what they were doing, who they were with, and, probably, how they had to sit down and absorb the initial shock of that horrific event. This many years later, they will also tell you what has become dear to them. And, they might throw in something about “naiveté loss”.
In Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, we have one more story. The face on this 9/11 story belongs to the main character of his novel. His name is Oskar Schell and he's 9 years old. His father died in the collapse of one of the Two Towers and now this diminutive, precocious Everyman is confused and hurt. He seeks a resolution of understanding for having part of his soul torn out. He has experienced the immediate loss of a principal figure in his life. This is not Death in the prolonged, drawn-out form of a lingering illness. This is Death in a more callous form--one that cruelly provides a missed opportunity to say good-bye, a last chance at a final conversation.
The reader is drawn into Oskar's world. His world is New York City where he says the cellular matter of his father floats around in the very air. In trying to reconcile the “worst day” of his life, he admits to having “a hole in the middle of me that every happy thing falls into.” Because Oskar is carrying around so much emotional baggage (what he calls “heavy boots”), Foer slowly and meticulously draws the reader into setting aside their own baggage and, over the next 300 pages, helping Oskar with carrying his.
Foer skillfully pulls us into Oskar's world by portraying this bright and troubled hobbit on his personal Quest seeking a lock for the key he has found amongst his father's belongings. As we join Oskar on his seemingly impossible journey over an eight-month period to find the one lock that this key will open, we are drawn into a world of the Five Boroughs, a mythical Sixth Borough, and interwoven images (actual pictures) of doorknobs, locks, keys, people and places famous and not so famous, and a haunting blurred image of a person falling from a skyscraper.
While at times disconcerting, these pictures plus textural alterations, like red corrections of an unsent letter from a distant relative, help to flesh out the various story lines of the people surrounding Oskar. There is his mom adjusting to her own sorrow and her growing relationship with a friend named Ron. Oskar does not tell her about his key/lock quest because “The lock was between me and dad.” He has a grandmother living in an apartment across the street who is his constant sounding board and guardian angel, always available through the walkie-talkies they each share. There is a mysterious renter living with her who plays a large part in the story. (I wish I could tell you more, but I'm not a spoiler.)
Oskar is a people magnet. Foer has them wash over us in a continuing and varying series of human waves. They fill up Oskar's life and, like layers peeled off an onion skin, the revelations concerning them converge before us and we see further examples of pain and suffering and joy that we all experience, not just in a post 9/11 world, but in any world lacking in conscious effort or inability in expressing the heartfelt love for others.
Interestingly enough, Foer does not hit us in the solar plexus with graphic 9/11 images that we have already seen too many times (and with too much pain). He does have, however, dramatic corollaries from history: the World War II firebombing of Dresden and a fictional account of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima. For this reviewer, it was one bombing too many and the redundancy lessens the impact of the Dresden event which has a major role on the people in Oskar's family.
At times, Foer's writing shines with the sparkling quality of a clear-white light through a crystal held very carefully in the reader's hand. This brings into question the concern about the need for all of the visual additions that he has included in the novel. Perhaps, like a sparse, clean-written sentence, fewer would have been better. This, however, is not a back-breaker for the reader to handle in this complex and moving story of yet one more survivor; not just a survivor of a post-9/11 trauma, but a survivor faced with the vicissitudes of an imperious and coldly uncaring world. Foer shows us that people struggling through and overcoming, slow measure by slow measure, can have the sound of many heartbeats joined together...and that can be extremely loud.
Friday, November 7, 2008
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
I made it!!!!
Hi all I finally have arrived!!! Jill and I have been trying to figure out why it would not let me join the group and all of the sudden it just did...weird!!! Anyway Thanks Jill for your understanding!!!
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Reviewing Foer
Julie Kvern
Advanced Writing/Comm.
Professor Jill Rossiter
October 4, 2008
Reviewing Foer
In literature writers can capitalize on disaster. By using these stimuli is alienation an aspect for those realistically impacted, especially when the literature in question is, although based upon real events, fictional? Instances like war, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, and political injustice can be used as jumping off points for people with writers block in addition to those writers solely interested in making quick cash. Does Jonathan Safran Foer do this? Does he piggyback on the pain associated with 9/11? I would have to say yes if his book wasn't so well written. Rich with alternative layout and style as well as bursting with realistic characterization it's hard not to get attached to the novel.
Foer's latest publication Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is urgent and raw. Emotion guides the piece into a vigorous prophecy for finding a new way to live after loss. After nine year old Oskar's father is killed in the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11 we are taken on a journey. He takes us to the homes of people named Black, to the struggles of understanding each other, and to areas of life that far exceeds a nine year olds maturity level. He is a tambourine player, a pacifist, a cat owner, a grandson, an atheist, a letter writer, an intelligent and creative young man who at times is unbelievable because of how truly gifted he is. However Foer realizes his audience, he understands the readers' desire for human traits and flaws in fictional characters. He makes Oskar real with the things he doesn't know.
The list in my head was getting incredibly long: Francis Scott Key
Fitzgerald, powdering her nose, Churchill, Mustang convertible,
Walter Cronkite, necking, the Bay of Pigs, LP, Datsun, Kent State, lard, Ayatollah Khomeini, Polaroid, apartheid, drive-in, favela, Trotsky, the Berlin Wall, Tito, Gone With the Wind, Frank Lloyd Wright, hula hoop, Technicolor, the Spanish Civil War, Grace Kelly, East Timor, slide
rule, a bunch of places in Africa whose names I tried to remember but
had already forgotten. It was getting hard to keep all the things I didn't know inside me. (154)
Oskar also has tremendous pressure put upon him. He has the weight of solitary knowledge of his father's last words as he arrives home early from school, alone. The phone even rang while he was there, presenting the final opportunity for him to speak to his father before his death, and Oskar was understandably afraid. He couldn't answer. Hiding this from his family he is motivated to discover as much as possible about his father's life when he found a key belonging to someone with the last name Black. This adventure is the active driving force of the literature, pushing it forward, equaling the struggles and achievements in self-discovery.
His mother, a busy working mom and assumed lax parent was estranged from her son during most of the novel because he wasn't capable of understanding her attempts to try to move forward with her life. He also had no idea until the end that she knew about the key and the quest to find the owner. "All of a sudden I understood why, when Mom asked where I was going, and I said 'out,' she didn't ask any more questions. She didn't have to, because she knew" (291).
Oskar's grandmother appeared to be the most understanding and accepting character in the novel. Throughout the book letters written by grandma serve as a parallel guide. Her understanding of event specific to her own childhood as written to Oskar coincides with his discoveries in part. Through these letters we have adequate knowledge into her background on how her family was killed in the Dresden Fire Bombings, how her sister was impregnated and in love with a man, how that man was grandma's future husband, how they met, how he cannot talk, how they lived with Nothing places and Something places, how they tried and how Oskar's grandfather left when she was pregnant. Grandpa also has sections in the novel where he is writing to the son he never met. Through these sections we get another view at the relationship between grandma and grandpa but also a lesson. Serving as more of a metaphor than a real character in the book he is used for explaining silence and how even though it may appear to be devastating, it doesn't always mean that there is nothing. The story of grandpa and grandma connects the things that are out of everyone's control like disaster and death.
As the novel proceeds we discover the intricate details Foer inlays, his interweaving themes and character interaction is masked as early confusion. For instance may readers became confused to the mother's lack of attention to her son. To some it is mind-boggling that a nine year old would be allowed, let alone remain unharmed by the 200+ "Blacks" he planned on visiting in search of where the key fit. However as we read on we find that she wasn't as absent as first led to believe.
Also of mention is the different styles of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Foer has the tendency to write streams of consciousness where some readers get lost in the mass of it. There is also alternative textual designs of parenthetical separations, photographs, single words or phrases used as a visual for grandpa's speaking style in daybooks, numbers representing his phone conversation, red editing marks that reinforcing readers knowledge on Thomas Schell's character habits, text that runs together, and blank pages representing a life story. Do these differences take away from the text or have their originality made the work stronger? I think the latter because in this media driven world it not only keeps interest of the reader but it helps with character development and understanding.
Foer's latest work not only institutes new ways at visual comprehension but also the work, the literature in itself conquers. The characters, the story line, and the overall way the work makes the reader feel deserves recognition. Foer creates a world as complex as our own lives and as intricate and incomprehensible as our own thoughts. By appointing a child narrator, he gives us insight into our own childhood workings through Oskar's dialogues, questions, and blatantly honest explanation to the reader.
Advanced Writing/Comm.
Professor Jill Rossiter
October 4, 2008
Reviewing Foer
In literature writers can capitalize on disaster. By using these stimuli is alienation an aspect for those realistically impacted, especially when the literature in question is, although based upon real events, fictional? Instances like war, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, and political injustice can be used as jumping off points for people with writers block in addition to those writers solely interested in making quick cash. Does Jonathan Safran Foer do this? Does he piggyback on the pain associated with 9/11? I would have to say yes if his book wasn't so well written. Rich with alternative layout and style as well as bursting with realistic characterization it's hard not to get attached to the novel.
Foer's latest publication Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is urgent and raw. Emotion guides the piece into a vigorous prophecy for finding a new way to live after loss. After nine year old Oskar's father is killed in the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9/11 we are taken on a journey. He takes us to the homes of people named Black, to the struggles of understanding each other, and to areas of life that far exceeds a nine year olds maturity level. He is a tambourine player, a pacifist, a cat owner, a grandson, an atheist, a letter writer, an intelligent and creative young man who at times is unbelievable because of how truly gifted he is. However Foer realizes his audience, he understands the readers' desire for human traits and flaws in fictional characters. He makes Oskar real with the things he doesn't know.
The list in my head was getting incredibly long: Francis Scott Key
Fitzgerald, powdering her nose, Churchill, Mustang convertible,
Walter Cronkite, necking, the Bay of Pigs, LP, Datsun, Kent State, lard, Ayatollah Khomeini, Polaroid, apartheid, drive-in, favela, Trotsky, the Berlin Wall, Tito, Gone With the Wind, Frank Lloyd Wright, hula hoop, Technicolor, the Spanish Civil War, Grace Kelly, East Timor, slide
rule, a bunch of places in Africa whose names I tried to remember but
had already forgotten. It was getting hard to keep all the things I didn't know inside me. (154)
Oskar also has tremendous pressure put upon him. He has the weight of solitary knowledge of his father's last words as he arrives home early from school, alone. The phone even rang while he was there, presenting the final opportunity for him to speak to his father before his death, and Oskar was understandably afraid. He couldn't answer. Hiding this from his family he is motivated to discover as much as possible about his father's life when he found a key belonging to someone with the last name Black. This adventure is the active driving force of the literature, pushing it forward, equaling the struggles and achievements in self-discovery.
His mother, a busy working mom and assumed lax parent was estranged from her son during most of the novel because he wasn't capable of understanding her attempts to try to move forward with her life. He also had no idea until the end that she knew about the key and the quest to find the owner. "All of a sudden I understood why, when Mom asked where I was going, and I said 'out,' she didn't ask any more questions. She didn't have to, because she knew" (291).
Oskar's grandmother appeared to be the most understanding and accepting character in the novel. Throughout the book letters written by grandma serve as a parallel guide. Her understanding of event specific to her own childhood as written to Oskar coincides with his discoveries in part. Through these letters we have adequate knowledge into her background on how her family was killed in the Dresden Fire Bombings, how her sister was impregnated and in love with a man, how that man was grandma's future husband, how they met, how he cannot talk, how they lived with Nothing places and Something places, how they tried and how Oskar's grandfather left when she was pregnant. Grandpa also has sections in the novel where he is writing to the son he never met. Through these sections we get another view at the relationship between grandma and grandpa but also a lesson. Serving as more of a metaphor than a real character in the book he is used for explaining silence and how even though it may appear to be devastating, it doesn't always mean that there is nothing. The story of grandpa and grandma connects the things that are out of everyone's control like disaster and death.
As the novel proceeds we discover the intricate details Foer inlays, his interweaving themes and character interaction is masked as early confusion. For instance may readers became confused to the mother's lack of attention to her son. To some it is mind-boggling that a nine year old would be allowed, let alone remain unharmed by the 200+ "Blacks" he planned on visiting in search of where the key fit. However as we read on we find that she wasn't as absent as first led to believe.
Also of mention is the different styles of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Foer has the tendency to write streams of consciousness where some readers get lost in the mass of it. There is also alternative textual designs of parenthetical separations, photographs, single words or phrases used as a visual for grandpa's speaking style in daybooks, numbers representing his phone conversation, red editing marks that reinforcing readers knowledge on Thomas Schell's character habits, text that runs together, and blank pages representing a life story. Do these differences take away from the text or have their originality made the work stronger? I think the latter because in this media driven world it not only keeps interest of the reader but it helps with character development and understanding.
Foer's latest work not only institutes new ways at visual comprehension but also the work, the literature in itself conquers. The characters, the story line, and the overall way the work makes the reader feel deserves recognition. Foer creates a world as complex as our own lives and as intricate and incomprehensible as our own thoughts. By appointing a child narrator, he gives us insight into our own childhood workings through Oskar's dialogues, questions, and blatantly honest explanation to the reader.
Extremely Moving and Incredibly Touching
“What about a teakettle? What if the spout opened and closed when the steam came out, so it would become a mouth, and it could whistle pretty melodies or do Shakespeare, or just crack up with me?” This is how Jonathon Safran Foer starts his novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, a novel that appropriately enough, has an opening chapter entitled “What The?”. It is with this type of language that Foer is able to draw his audience into the story. Through this first chapter, Foer is able to slowly build up the audience to the introduction of the main character, Oskar, a nine year old boy whose expansive imagination, and beloved savant-like innocence pulls at the heart strings of all that he meets.
As you read, you discover that Oskar has recently experienced the loss of a parent. While Foer doesn’t come right out and say it, Oskar’s father was one of the many victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks. It is this loss that is at the heart of the story. Oskar and his father shared a special bond, as special as any father and son could have. The loss of his father left a void in the young boy, a void that Oskar was having a difficult time both explaining and accepting.
In an attempt to rekindle the connection to his father, Oskar frequently spends time in his father’s closet. For as Oskar put it, “Even though Dad’s coffin was empty, his closet was full”. One evening, on the highest shelf of the closet, Oskar found an envelope hidden within a blue vase. In the envelope was a key, “It was a weird-looking key, obviously to something extremely important, because it was fatter and shorter than a normal key”.
Determined that this was a clue left for him by his father, Oskar sets out on a journey to discover the lock that the key belongs to. The journey to discover the hidden lock takes Oskar up and down the streets of New York. Along the way he meets a memorable cast of characters and learns many valuable lessons about love and loss.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is an amazing journey towards healing and acceptance; a story in which one learns that a day should never go by without saying “I love you”. Jonathon Safran Foer is a master at his craft and the story that he paints will capture your imagination and your heart.
For Everyone
At first glance, Foer’s novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, seems to be about just one horrific instance, concerning one boy and the loss of his father. However, in looking deeper into the story, the reader can find many human tragedies. When looking further, we find that Foer not only focuses on the hardships of Oskar, the fatherless nine-year-old, but he also the obstacles faced by the widowed mother, divorced woman, the recluse old man, the estranged grandfather and others. The struggles that man-kind endures everyday creates a common ground that unites us as humans. This book reaches a wide variety of people. The passion and feeling in this book will consume any reader.
Obviously, the people who were directly affected by 9/11 will identify with Foer’s novel. They may see themselves within the characters. Although reading this story would bring pain and suffering to loved ones of 9/11 victims, they may find it healing and a sense of closure. Any parents can relate to Oskar and also look at him as a child of their own. Oskar not only lost his father, but he also lost the only person who spoke his language. The fatherless boy is left to overcome this tragedy on his own. He set out on a quest to explain the key he found in his father’s closet. This journey was so important to Oskar that he was willing to face his fears of tall buildings and subways to find the answer. During this search one child’s pain later becomes another’s healing.
Beyond the obvious audience, adolescence and young adults can also benefit from this young boys search for life’s answers. The questions raised in this book are questions that even some adults have never asked themselves. It forces one to re-evaluate what is important in life. Instead of Oskar’s grandmother using up all of her energy being angry at her husband’s abandonment, she focuses on raising her child. In Oskar’s search for the truth, he won’t settle for any answers short of that. When his mother tells him that Oskar’s father’s spirit is in the coffin, he won’t accept it. He sees the coffin as an empty box. Another lesson that Oskar shows us is to not give up. He doesn’t accept his mother’s explanation for what is in the coffin, so he takes it upon himself to rectify the situation by placing the Renter’s letters in the coffin. This is not the only instance of Oskar not giving up. This lesson is consistent throughout the book.
The most general audience that this book draws in is any person who has ever experienced life. The human experiences that the characters in the story endure are ones that touch all of us in one way or another. Every human emotion wrapped into this book is felt by every human being. The characters face tragedy, love, hope, faith, loneliness, trust, distrust, pain, fear, agony, and anger.
Some readers will associate Oskar’s grandfather with society. At one time he could speak fluently, but as time went on lost the ability to speak. In the same sense, members of society find it hard to talk about some things and fear that they are crossing the line if they do. They find themselves muted when it is most important. When Grandpa came back from Europe, he couldn’t explain to Oskar who he was or where he came from. After 9/11, many people couldn’t ask the questions they should have been asking nor could they explain why in many cases.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close pushes people out of their comfort zones. Just as the title eludes, the questions and conflicts in this novel are so personal that they are difficult to wrestle. It can be uncomfortable as well as healing. The reader accompanies Oskar on his tumultuous journey to find answers to life. By the end of the story Oskar as well as Grandma, Grandpa, Mom and Mr. Black, have found closure.
Obviously, the people who were directly affected by 9/11 will identify with Foer’s novel. They may see themselves within the characters. Although reading this story would bring pain and suffering to loved ones of 9/11 victims, they may find it healing and a sense of closure. Any parents can relate to Oskar and also look at him as a child of their own. Oskar not only lost his father, but he also lost the only person who spoke his language. The fatherless boy is left to overcome this tragedy on his own. He set out on a quest to explain the key he found in his father’s closet. This journey was so important to Oskar that he was willing to face his fears of tall buildings and subways to find the answer. During this search one child’s pain later becomes another’s healing.
Beyond the obvious audience, adolescence and young adults can also benefit from this young boys search for life’s answers. The questions raised in this book are questions that even some adults have never asked themselves. It forces one to re-evaluate what is important in life. Instead of Oskar’s grandmother using up all of her energy being angry at her husband’s abandonment, she focuses on raising her child. In Oskar’s search for the truth, he won’t settle for any answers short of that. When his mother tells him that Oskar’s father’s spirit is in the coffin, he won’t accept it. He sees the coffin as an empty box. Another lesson that Oskar shows us is to not give up. He doesn’t accept his mother’s explanation for what is in the coffin, so he takes it upon himself to rectify the situation by placing the Renter’s letters in the coffin. This is not the only instance of Oskar not giving up. This lesson is consistent throughout the book.
The most general audience that this book draws in is any person who has ever experienced life. The human experiences that the characters in the story endure are ones that touch all of us in one way or another. Every human emotion wrapped into this book is felt by every human being. The characters face tragedy, love, hope, faith, loneliness, trust, distrust, pain, fear, agony, and anger.
Some readers will associate Oskar’s grandfather with society. At one time he could speak fluently, but as time went on lost the ability to speak. In the same sense, members of society find it hard to talk about some things and fear that they are crossing the line if they do. They find themselves muted when it is most important. When Grandpa came back from Europe, he couldn’t explain to Oskar who he was or where he came from. After 9/11, many people couldn’t ask the questions they should have been asking nor could they explain why in many cases.
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close pushes people out of their comfort zones. Just as the title eludes, the questions and conflicts in this novel are so personal that they are difficult to wrestle. It can be uncomfortable as well as healing. The reader accompanies Oskar on his tumultuous journey to find answers to life. By the end of the story Oskar as well as Grandma, Grandpa, Mom and Mr. Black, have found closure.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Jonathan Saffran Foer - Master Composer
Jonathan Safran Foer, a brave young author of the new millennium, has offered us a story about an incredibly bright nine-year-old boy, Oskar, unhinged by the loss of his father in the tragedy of 9/11. In his second novel, “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”, Foer not only intrepidly tackles 9/11 as it relates to Oskar’s family but also successfully layers and interrelates the experiences of his paternal grandparents at the bombing of Dresden, Germany during World War II. In fact, this duel narrative is a masterful syncopation of aftermath experiences which depend on each other until the end of the tale where they coalesce into insightful personal revelations. When all comes together at the end, we witness a metamorphosis of sorts - the crawling caterpillar takes flight as a butterfly - and, while they are far from being a perfect family, they strike up a fresh, innovative beat. The new pulse, unlike Foer’s allegory of “the place in the hospital where babies are born would sound like crystal chandeliers in a houseboat, because the babies wouldn’t have had time to match up their heart beats yet…,” relates well to what the family leaves behind.
Foer sets the rhythm of the breeze pulsing off the butterfly’s wings on page one and doesn’t stop. His word and phrase associations set the moods, tone, and a percussive dissonance that keeps his audience on their toes, or turns them away altogether. “Raisons d’etre” and “incredibly bad fart” in sentences next to each other were marvelously prophetic in terms of tone, for example. Oskar is a walking, talking paradox, as is the predicament of his grandparents. And when Foer moves to free associate his thoughts, it’s pure four-count jungle beat. Bo Diddley was known for pounding out a four beat on the drums called the “happy hardcore.” This author’s upbeat exhalations burst forth in necessary parts pulling us to our feet from our vulnerable, exposed position in the dirt with the character who hurts at the time only to dance us on to the next scene. We figuratively take a roller coaster ride with Oskar, as well as his family.
Through Oskar, Foer launches us on an absurdly complicated quest from the outset. Even with clues beating en mass through the air like a diminutive thwumping wind in the form of pictures and written images, it still took reading the entire book for me to finally unearth the treasure of the doorknobs. Foer layers these seen-through-a gauzy-reality re-enactments of two actual cataclysmic man-borne disasters with extremely loud pain and incredibly real emotion from characters that his audience invests in heart and soul. They are the walking wounded. They are the very sensitive spirits who carry the reservoirs, of which Oskar invents, available for the tears of others in their souls. When Grampa returns to Anna’s home to see what remains after the Dresden disaster, all that is left is “a patch of the façade which held the door up.” I distinctly remember the first images shown on TV after the thick dust and fine mist began to clear from the area around the grounds where the Twin Towers once stood. What remained was a piece of the façade – skeletal remains of a gargantuan building which once house the dreams of many. Scores of those people burned. For some reason, Grampa grabbed that door handle and it was so hot it took his skin off. Grampa became cataleptic after an amalgam of painful events in Dresden. This subtle layering of innuendo and abject imagery enhances the experience of reading Foer.
The balance of humor elevates the reader to a place of rest and recuperation in order to endure to the end with Oskar and his family. The young genius forms an unconventional friendship with the driver of the limo that transported Oskar, his mother and grandmother to his father’s funeral. The limo driver is willing, albeit uneasily, to listen to Oskar’s ramblings. The precocious boy carries on a fast paced conversation with the driver that contains references to inventing such things as a limo long enough to stretch from a woman’s VJ to a mausoleum. He goes on to butchers the English language, as little boys often do, in my experience. At one point he blurts out, “Well, succotash my balzac, dipshitake.” I personally spent enough of my youth reproaching my brother’s well thought out rhythmic renditions of ‘Old McDonald’ and what the farmer had on the farm after the cow moved its bowels. So many times I remember regaling him with disgust and cries of “Eeeewww, I’m gonna tell!” I had no problem relating to Oskar, the intellectual titan, as a child. His creator made him vulnerable, distractible, and forgetful as children usually are.
Grampa, totally dispossessed of earthly materials, except for unsent letters to his son, returns some time after his son’s death, dragging the baggage full of one-sided conversations along. When asked by the man who took his passport why he came, Grampa replied, “To mourn.” And then, he said, after a pause, “To try to live.” And again, we hear the reference of rhythm, only this, a discord, which could muddle even more the harmony of this family - these ‘Foer’ hurting people. While Grampa’s answer to the man might have disappointed Oskar’s grandmother, had she heard, she has shown throughout her ordeal that touch, nearness, and an occasional “I’m ok.” are enough for her to keep pace.
Oskar carries his wealth with him at all times and distributes his riches as he travails. This is a chronicle of reciprocal enrichment, sweetly and mysteriously convoluted in the telling. His father unwittingly sent him on a journey to find the right Mr. or Ms. Black for a key he found hidden in his dad’s room in a vase with the word ‘Black’ written on it. Oskar is convinced he will uncover some hidden, intimately related secret to his father’s life at the end of this treasure hunt. This determined youngster, who repeatedly decries having ‘heavy boots’, decides to take up the baton and begin his investigation of all the Blacks in the phone book. The one and only trip to visit a Black by himself is in the very building in which he lives. Here, he begins an illuminating friendship with a man over 100 years old who accompanies Oskar on his special quest. Oskar goes on to meet the Mr. and Ms. Blacks of various degrees of depth, damage, need and desire to be needed. While he shares of himself, he allows them to grant him what they have to offer. Many of them show up at a school performance where he plays the part of poor dead Yorick, only his head showing to the audience. When he spies the various Blacks seated in the audience Oskar realizes that their presence effectually “lightens his boots.”
Oskar’s mother is the beat of his heart though, at times, it seems his grandmother holds that prized position. So many times this son refers to his mother, or doing something for her, as his raison d’etre, his reason to exist. There is discord with his mother, but in Oskar’s eyes that syncope lays in the precipitous beat of another man’s heart taking the place of his dad in his mother’s life.
I refer to Foer as brave, and intrepid, for one reason, because of his response to the force of criticism that has been thrown his way. For instance, John Updike reviewed this book in the New Yorker (March 14, 2005), and blasted Foer’s protagonist whose “family consists of a dog called Buckminster, an unusually permissive and remote working mother, a loving grandmother who lives across the street and talks to him through a baby monitor, and a grandfather whom the trauma of the Dresden fire bombing has robbed of the gift of speech…” as having “few accultured antibodies to heal the wounds of his father’s abrupt death.” I have to wonder, first of all, if he paid attention while he read the book, because his truths are helter-skelter. Apparently he didn’t catch the allusions regarding the fact that Oskar’s mom orchestrated his trips around the city, on the sly. Secondly, I am concerned that Mr. Updike was bother by the notion of a prepubescent child that is unaccustomed to dealing with death. He actually insinuates that Oskar would have, in ‘normal’ situations, learned vicariously through the past trials of his family to deal in a ‘healthier’ manner with the death of his father. I challenge Updike to look up the word ‘empathy’ in the dictionary and then practice the concept.
Harry Seigel, in his review “Extremely Cloying & Incredibly False” in the New York Press, refers to a scene where Oskar’s grandmother and her sister Anna lay in bed at night and share a kiss. His perception of the passage made me wonder if he had actually read the book. He wrote, “Foer seems to have a soft spot for incest. At one point, the grandmother recalls lying in bed with her sister in their youth. The two of them kissing, with tongue…Sister’s kissing, young children walking city streets unaccompanied; it’s a wonderful life for worldly naifs.” Never once do we read that the sisters share tongue or does Oskar walk the night unaccompanied. My naiveté has been exposed, I suspect. I expected such an accusatory tone to emanate from actual fact. Never-the-less, in his interview with Robert Birnbaum, Foer in the Morning News, stated, “… rejection is integral to the publishing process and is no indication of quality.” which is a statement consistent with the patterns set forth in this book.
Whatever happens, no matter how it interrupts the cadence of life or of the pattern of our breathing, we simply must breath. The lesson I learn from Oskar, is to breath according to my own tempo, allowing for occasional dissonance. Indeed, I contend there can be something gained in the planning of an occasional rough ride, if only to quicken the rhythm of the pulse. Grandma’s lesson, I do so appreciate, since I am closer to her age. I am more determined to learn to be content in a world that, at times, really sucks!
Foer sets the rhythm of the breeze pulsing off the butterfly’s wings on page one and doesn’t stop. His word and phrase associations set the moods, tone, and a percussive dissonance that keeps his audience on their toes, or turns them away altogether. “Raisons d’etre” and “incredibly bad fart” in sentences next to each other were marvelously prophetic in terms of tone, for example. Oskar is a walking, talking paradox, as is the predicament of his grandparents. And when Foer moves to free associate his thoughts, it’s pure four-count jungle beat. Bo Diddley was known for pounding out a four beat on the drums called the “happy hardcore.” This author’s upbeat exhalations burst forth in necessary parts pulling us to our feet from our vulnerable, exposed position in the dirt with the character who hurts at the time only to dance us on to the next scene. We figuratively take a roller coaster ride with Oskar, as well as his family.
Through Oskar, Foer launches us on an absurdly complicated quest from the outset. Even with clues beating en mass through the air like a diminutive thwumping wind in the form of pictures and written images, it still took reading the entire book for me to finally unearth the treasure of the doorknobs. Foer layers these seen-through-a gauzy-reality re-enactments of two actual cataclysmic man-borne disasters with extremely loud pain and incredibly real emotion from characters that his audience invests in heart and soul. They are the walking wounded. They are the very sensitive spirits who carry the reservoirs, of which Oskar invents, available for the tears of others in their souls. When Grampa returns to Anna’s home to see what remains after the Dresden disaster, all that is left is “a patch of the façade which held the door up.” I distinctly remember the first images shown on TV after the thick dust and fine mist began to clear from the area around the grounds where the Twin Towers once stood. What remained was a piece of the façade – skeletal remains of a gargantuan building which once house the dreams of many. Scores of those people burned. For some reason, Grampa grabbed that door handle and it was so hot it took his skin off. Grampa became cataleptic after an amalgam of painful events in Dresden. This subtle layering of innuendo and abject imagery enhances the experience of reading Foer.
The balance of humor elevates the reader to a place of rest and recuperation in order to endure to the end with Oskar and his family. The young genius forms an unconventional friendship with the driver of the limo that transported Oskar, his mother and grandmother to his father’s funeral. The limo driver is willing, albeit uneasily, to listen to Oskar’s ramblings. The precocious boy carries on a fast paced conversation with the driver that contains references to inventing such things as a limo long enough to stretch from a woman’s VJ to a mausoleum. He goes on to butchers the English language, as little boys often do, in my experience. At one point he blurts out, “Well, succotash my balzac, dipshitake.” I personally spent enough of my youth reproaching my brother’s well thought out rhythmic renditions of ‘Old McDonald’ and what the farmer had on the farm after the cow moved its bowels. So many times I remember regaling him with disgust and cries of “Eeeewww, I’m gonna tell!” I had no problem relating to Oskar, the intellectual titan, as a child. His creator made him vulnerable, distractible, and forgetful as children usually are.
Grampa, totally dispossessed of earthly materials, except for unsent letters to his son, returns some time after his son’s death, dragging the baggage full of one-sided conversations along. When asked by the man who took his passport why he came, Grampa replied, “To mourn.” And then, he said, after a pause, “To try to live.” And again, we hear the reference of rhythm, only this, a discord, which could muddle even more the harmony of this family - these ‘Foer’ hurting people. While Grampa’s answer to the man might have disappointed Oskar’s grandmother, had she heard, she has shown throughout her ordeal that touch, nearness, and an occasional “I’m ok.” are enough for her to keep pace.
Oskar carries his wealth with him at all times and distributes his riches as he travails. This is a chronicle of reciprocal enrichment, sweetly and mysteriously convoluted in the telling. His father unwittingly sent him on a journey to find the right Mr. or Ms. Black for a key he found hidden in his dad’s room in a vase with the word ‘Black’ written on it. Oskar is convinced he will uncover some hidden, intimately related secret to his father’s life at the end of this treasure hunt. This determined youngster, who repeatedly decries having ‘heavy boots’, decides to take up the baton and begin his investigation of all the Blacks in the phone book. The one and only trip to visit a Black by himself is in the very building in which he lives. Here, he begins an illuminating friendship with a man over 100 years old who accompanies Oskar on his special quest. Oskar goes on to meet the Mr. and Ms. Blacks of various degrees of depth, damage, need and desire to be needed. While he shares of himself, he allows them to grant him what they have to offer. Many of them show up at a school performance where he plays the part of poor dead Yorick, only his head showing to the audience. When he spies the various Blacks seated in the audience Oskar realizes that their presence effectually “lightens his boots.”
Oskar’s mother is the beat of his heart though, at times, it seems his grandmother holds that prized position. So many times this son refers to his mother, or doing something for her, as his raison d’etre, his reason to exist. There is discord with his mother, but in Oskar’s eyes that syncope lays in the precipitous beat of another man’s heart taking the place of his dad in his mother’s life.
I refer to Foer as brave, and intrepid, for one reason, because of his response to the force of criticism that has been thrown his way. For instance, John Updike reviewed this book in the New Yorker (March 14, 2005), and blasted Foer’s protagonist whose “family consists of a dog called Buckminster, an unusually permissive and remote working mother, a loving grandmother who lives across the street and talks to him through a baby monitor, and a grandfather whom the trauma of the Dresden fire bombing has robbed of the gift of speech…” as having “few accultured antibodies to heal the wounds of his father’s abrupt death.” I have to wonder, first of all, if he paid attention while he read the book, because his truths are helter-skelter. Apparently he didn’t catch the allusions regarding the fact that Oskar’s mom orchestrated his trips around the city, on the sly. Secondly, I am concerned that Mr. Updike was bother by the notion of a prepubescent child that is unaccustomed to dealing with death. He actually insinuates that Oskar would have, in ‘normal’ situations, learned vicariously through the past trials of his family to deal in a ‘healthier’ manner with the death of his father. I challenge Updike to look up the word ‘empathy’ in the dictionary and then practice the concept.
Harry Seigel, in his review “Extremely Cloying & Incredibly False” in the New York Press, refers to a scene where Oskar’s grandmother and her sister Anna lay in bed at night and share a kiss. His perception of the passage made me wonder if he had actually read the book. He wrote, “Foer seems to have a soft spot for incest. At one point, the grandmother recalls lying in bed with her sister in their youth. The two of them kissing, with tongue…Sister’s kissing, young children walking city streets unaccompanied; it’s a wonderful life for worldly naifs.” Never once do we read that the sisters share tongue or does Oskar walk the night unaccompanied. My naiveté has been exposed, I suspect. I expected such an accusatory tone to emanate from actual fact. Never-the-less, in his interview with Robert Birnbaum, Foer in the Morning News, stated, “… rejection is integral to the publishing process and is no indication of quality.” which is a statement consistent with the patterns set forth in this book.
Whatever happens, no matter how it interrupts the cadence of life or of the pattern of our breathing, we simply must breath. The lesson I learn from Oskar, is to breath according to my own tempo, allowing for occasional dissonance. Indeed, I contend there can be something gained in the planning of an occasional rough ride, if only to quicken the rhythm of the pulse. Grandma’s lesson, I do so appreciate, since I am closer to her age. I am more determined to learn to be content in a world that, at times, really sucks!
Friday, October 3, 2008
The Devil's Advocate
Jonathan Safran Foer recently wrote a novel that I painstakingly read, over coffee, because my bloodshot eyes were straining to hold their lids open throughout the turning of the pages. The novel was entitled Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and was written about a nine-year old boy and his Grandparents from irritatingly alternate points of view. One could argue that the main character is the father of Oskar, a ridiculous child constructed of Foer’s toilet humor and petty inventions. The man, Thomas Schell, is killed in the World Trade Center disaster of 9-11, and this seemingly pointless collection of thoughts, pictures and letters surrounds his life and death through the eyes of Oskar, his grandmother and his grandfather. Foer’s writing seems to be misleading to readers, juvenile grammatically, sadistic in nature, and disgustingly graphic. Oskar Schell is our first character, who is troubled, of course, by his father’s death, and goes snooping through his mother’s closet to find a vase with an envelope labeled “Black,” and goes on a journey through the entire city of New York (by himself, mind you) to question every person with the last name Black about the key found inside the mysterious envelope. This boy is a social outcast, who finds friends of the 103 year-old nature along the way, and asks a woman, Abby Black, who is at least ten years older than he, if he can kiss her. Promoting pedophilia, Abby tells him to kiss her later in the story, but thankfully, Oskar declines, saying that he is embarrassed. After the whole novel of searching for the missing lock to his key, which we are lead to believe will lead Oskar to one final tie to his dead father, we find out that this key actually has nothing to do with either Oskar or his father. Or us, as readers, for that matter. I felt tricked by Foer’s book; I feel like I was strung along on this journey with no real purpose. Throughout the nine-year old boy’s journey, we are repeatedly subjected to parts of the book which are Grandma’s “feelings.” The grammar and writing style in these sections are confusing, with needless line-breaks, and left-aligned paragraphs. Mr. Foer subjects us to interesting and immoral concepts like incest, particularly between Grandma and her sister. They share a kiss; with tongue, and Grandma expresses her love for her sister, which comes across more like the love you would have for your first crush. Eventually, we find out that Grandma marries her sister’s husband after her untimely demise in the Dresden bombings, which is another reference to war and death, almost as if Foer intends to just strangle his readers’ feelings by bringing up horrific tragedies for his own personal dramatic gain, I suppose, just like his first novel, which was supposedly about the holocaust. If these characters seem ridiculous, you will be blown away by the immature and intensely confounding Grandfather, who speaks to his audience through letters to his son he’s never met. The man left his pregnant wife, Grandma, whom he married after her sister, Anna died (if you’re following) in Dresden. He stopped speaking after Anna passed away while she was pregnant. Some of the pages whose voice belongs to Grandpa are single words, or a phrase, or even sometimes a simple picture of a doorknob. I stopped reading picture books in second grade. The day of 9/11, Grandpa shows up at Grandma’s house and they eventually make up, leading to a disgustingly graphic love-making scene in the book between the two that was utterly unnecessary, and left me reaching for my barf-bag all through the night. Overall, I think that this book was an overly graphic, immature, sadistic, and ridiculously pointless endeavor into a journey through time-space-New York. It left me extremely bored and incredibly confused. Jonathan Safran Foer’s writing style was wild, difficult to understand and all over the place. Luckily, I had two pots of coffee, a baby to keep me taking breaks and a classroom of peers to vent to while I suffered through the insufferable. Maybe someone could find some good in this filthy pile of dog pies; I, however, will stick to my Dean Koontz and Brian Weiss, who can keep me awake through the night with their awe-inspiring words.
Do Not Procrastinate
Harvard graduate Jonathan Safran Foer leads a discovery tour through the 9/11 tragedy in his book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. This fictional tale pulls the reader towards finding the most important element of preparation in regards to tragic and sudden loss of loved ones. The psychological effects of horrible tragedies are traumatic and long lasting. Daunting truth hovers over survivors of lost potential. What could have been will never be. What was will never be again. Jonathan helps us find a solution for some form of closure given the situation.
With an interest in knowledge and the finished work of modern musical and cinema geniuses he is more attracted to genuine art rather than what is shoved down the throats of the general public and called art by the visually and audibly illiterate. His writing incorporates the themes that infiltrate into his soul. Winding around each other intricately, Foer uses his favorite art form to capture his reader's imaginations while conveying what he finds deeply important.
An avid consumer of media arts like movies and music, Foer is a philosophical thinker and jumps into subjects like they are a pool of interesting knowledge molecules. In an interview posted on morning news in 2005 Foer states, “... the two things that make books books, that make them the art form I most love—are how much they give and how much they withhold. Like, books are generous things, they give enough to really stimulate your imagination. But they also have to withhold enough for it to be your imagination and not the author’s.” The interviews and profiles he has shared with the public show the sense of beauty that he holds, intellectualized yet genuine. He is inspired by beauty and strives to replicate it.
Books have been around for centuries. People will always enjoy escaping, learning, experiencing other points of view. Culture, at least in the last 100 years, changes from generation to generation, however. The generation that Foer has as an audience is more visual than ever before. Each day a ridiculous amount of images bombard the average person. Electronic media, like the internet or television, combine with the average person's habits of consumerism and forces every person to interpret everything they see. Discernment and attention span are highly practiced and attuned in visual elements. Literature, however, has taken a major blow with all the attention focused on images. Although the everyday novel can still be a breath of fresh air, this avant garde piece combines the two genres, visual and literary imagery, together. This targets the common person in a fresh new way. What better way to communicate an age old lesson so often ignored?! Foer adds his own twist and reaches people where their interest actually lies, and in a way, forces them to listen. Combining mediums in art is not a new concept and breaking out of the literary box has served Foer's purpose well.
Moved by world tragedies in some way or another Foer delves into writing a novel founded on the principles of their horrors and effects on human psychology. He searched for what was really to be learned from these events. Letting the people that you love know the truth of love is all an external party can really do in reaction and preparation to the events that Foer has chosen to cover in his books – the Holocaust, the Dresden Bombing, and the 9/11 Plane Wreck. He even briefly covered the horrors of the atom bomb in Hiroshima. It is what is beautiful and pure that makes life worth living - it is relationships that are vital. Love, loving and being loved could very well be the most beautiful things to ever exist. The survivors in the families of the innocent people from these tragedies didn't get to say goodbye. They did not get to communicate, “I love you!” in an intimate meaningful way that they now so badly wished they had.
A classmate of mine, Teri Lawen, once stated in a short commentary, “The book reminded me that life is precious…and it made me want to share those feelings with those who mean the most to me.” I have been fortunate enough in my short life to not have experienced too many life tragedies. After my father deserted my pregnant mother her father, my grandfather, stepped in to make sure that I, the baby, was loved and taken care of by a strong, confident, and moral father figure. He didn't have too much of a choice. My mom had to move back into their house for a while, for financial and emotional reasons. He did an excellent job. The summer just before my fourth grade year he died of a rare cancer. I was too scared to tell him that I loved him in those last days. I was afraid it would be my last chance. Somehow I felt that if I didn't tell him he would not die. There would have to be another chance. I was wrong. In many of the letters the truth that there may never be another chance to say what you needed to say is highlighted. My Papa knew I loved him, so he was a good person to have learned that lesson on. The grandmother's sister, Anna, should have also known, but Grandma was not so sure. Over 40 years later she regrets that in those last moments together she refrained to take the opportunity to tell her she was loved. She made sure to tell Oskar.,br>
Foer's book is a work of literary art. Instead of composing a memoir or autobiographical story he created the story and illustrates a point while bringing the reader closer to a subject that subtly remains on the hush. Not being a true account the book allows experimental writing style and doing so leaves the reader still pondering not only the subject but how the author's revelations are portrayed.
Jonathan Safran Foer's point of view was portrayed in a fictional light through the form of a collection of letters from various people. The story line is told with a clearly written but unstructured feel. The letter approach was done in an interesting and unique manner with the reader is not quite sure where it is being led. Simultaneously we are taken through the grandparent's past as we live in Oskar's present with the characters speaking both to each other and to you. We end up comparing the Dresden bombing of 1945 in Germany to the current 9/11 tragedy in 2001, nearly half a century later. The letters were all to either to Oskar, or his father. Since his dead father never received any of the 40 years worth of letters (most of which we did not have to read, either!!), they all felt as if they Oskar was the recipient. They also felt like diary entries – and occasionally were almost too intimate. When looked at from afar there was very little communication actually going on between the characters. This is overlooked easily since there is so much going on for the reader.
People of all ages and backgrounds will easily identify with the content of the story because of the many relationships, seemingly peculiar reactions and emotions in light of the situations outlined through story filled letters. The manner is which this book was written, however, can much more easily be understood by the visual generation - the generation more willing to break traditional for the sake of style. Those who thoroughly enjoy and digest this book may see that it is more of a “scene” avant-garde piece of fiction designed to dig into the hearts of the readers and open their views of not only literature and its capabilities but also to the effects of tragedies on families and relationships and the mind.
The too-big-for-comprehension 9/11 tragedy was made to seem smaller and more close to home. Seeing through Oskar's eyes to the loss of a father and role model was endearing. Being a child, he is automatically more vulnerable and innocent. Immediately this softens the viewer in the direction of sympathy and readies them for the whatever concept about to be encountered.
One downfall I felt the book had was it did not expand on many objects that were introduced. For example, the key. Even when Oskar's search was over I felt the situation was unresolved. The key didn't seem relevant to anything else in the book. Digging things up in central park and the information about the 6th burrow added a small amount of character and relationship development between the nine- year old boy and his dead father. Other than that they were not taken anywhere, either. Things like that seemed more of a distraction to any prevalent themes than an addition.
The sex scenes with the grandparents did not particularly seem completely necessary. They illustrated the strange relationship between the two well, but I'm not sure they had to be quite as graphic. Why this information would ever be included in a letter to your nine year old grandson I'm not really sure. It makes the honest and believable story a little questionable. It was interesting, however, how the phrase, “I don't know why people ever make love...” is used so often - about as often as they make love.
The way Foer used the concept of clues on multiple levels was a respectable trait I found in the novel. Not only does he have Oskar constantly investigating to discover things as part of his quest to find the truth and get closer to his deceased father, he also develops character traits by interactions with the man in his life that he lost. On top of this, Foer himself uses hard-to-pick-up-on foreshadowing. One great example of this is when Oskar is investigating the art store in search of an answer regarding the word black written in a red pen. This is where (through strange art clerk logic) he finds that black is really Black, a name. In this scene of the novel the name Thomas Schell is found everywhere throughout the store scribbled and scratched in the customer testing supplies. The art clerk didn't know how often they changed the testing supplies and Oskar's father, Thomas Schell, had been dead nearly a year at this point. This foreshadows a major piece of interest to come, but the moment of reading it is just a bit confusing. It confuses Oskar as well as the reader so Foer cannot be accused of using unclear writing. He simply disguises the foreshadowing as part of the story line for Oskar's quest.
A member of his very own audience, Foer knows who he was writing to. The large task of attacking the silent taboos of world tragedies in the form of a fictional novel is daunting. At the same time it, in and of itself, creates immediate tension with potential readers. This is just the first tactic Foer uses to keep and expand the reader's attentions and interest. He takes us to a world easy to identify with on many levels. Foer is a young writer that, although extremely talented, educated, and successful, has a long way to go before reaching where I believe his potential as a writer stands. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a work of art. It is also a learning experience for Foer so that his next novel will be more tightly wound, structured and hopefully contain less dead-ends, given that is the direction he intends to head. This book was successful no matter how harsh his critics so long as Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close leaves readers with a new understanding that saying what is vital cannot wait. Maybe now someone will not wait. They will not procrastinate. What Booklist calls “undoubtedly the most beautiful and heartbreaking flip book in all of literature, ” may have just changed one person's entire life.
With an interest in knowledge and the finished work of modern musical and cinema geniuses he is more attracted to genuine art rather than what is shoved down the throats of the general public and called art by the visually and audibly illiterate. His writing incorporates the themes that infiltrate into his soul. Winding around each other intricately, Foer uses his favorite art form to capture his reader's imaginations while conveying what he finds deeply important.
An avid consumer of media arts like movies and music, Foer is a philosophical thinker and jumps into subjects like they are a pool of interesting knowledge molecules. In an interview posted on morning news in 2005 Foer states, “... the two things that make books books, that make them the art form I most love—are how much they give and how much they withhold. Like, books are generous things, they give enough to really stimulate your imagination. But they also have to withhold enough for it to be your imagination and not the author’s.” The interviews and profiles he has shared with the public show the sense of beauty that he holds, intellectualized yet genuine. He is inspired by beauty and strives to replicate it.
Books have been around for centuries. People will always enjoy escaping, learning, experiencing other points of view. Culture, at least in the last 100 years, changes from generation to generation, however. The generation that Foer has as an audience is more visual than ever before. Each day a ridiculous amount of images bombard the average person. Electronic media, like the internet or television, combine with the average person's habits of consumerism and forces every person to interpret everything they see. Discernment and attention span are highly practiced and attuned in visual elements. Literature, however, has taken a major blow with all the attention focused on images. Although the everyday novel can still be a breath of fresh air, this avant garde piece combines the two genres, visual and literary imagery, together. This targets the common person in a fresh new way. What better way to communicate an age old lesson so often ignored?! Foer adds his own twist and reaches people where their interest actually lies, and in a way, forces them to listen. Combining mediums in art is not a new concept and breaking out of the literary box has served Foer's purpose well.
Moved by world tragedies in some way or another Foer delves into writing a novel founded on the principles of their horrors and effects on human psychology. He searched for what was really to be learned from these events. Letting the people that you love know the truth of love is all an external party can really do in reaction and preparation to the events that Foer has chosen to cover in his books – the Holocaust, the Dresden Bombing, and the 9/11 Plane Wreck. He even briefly covered the horrors of the atom bomb in Hiroshima. It is what is beautiful and pure that makes life worth living - it is relationships that are vital. Love, loving and being loved could very well be the most beautiful things to ever exist. The survivors in the families of the innocent people from these tragedies didn't get to say goodbye. They did not get to communicate, “I love you!” in an intimate meaningful way that they now so badly wished they had.
A classmate of mine, Teri Lawen, once stated in a short commentary, “The book reminded me that life is precious…and it made me want to share those feelings with those who mean the most to me.” I have been fortunate enough in my short life to not have experienced too many life tragedies. After my father deserted my pregnant mother her father, my grandfather, stepped in to make sure that I, the baby, was loved and taken care of by a strong, confident, and moral father figure. He didn't have too much of a choice. My mom had to move back into their house for a while, for financial and emotional reasons. He did an excellent job. The summer just before my fourth grade year he died of a rare cancer. I was too scared to tell him that I loved him in those last days. I was afraid it would be my last chance. Somehow I felt that if I didn't tell him he would not die. There would have to be another chance. I was wrong. In many of the letters the truth that there may never be another chance to say what you needed to say is highlighted. My Papa knew I loved him, so he was a good person to have learned that lesson on. The grandmother's sister, Anna, should have also known, but Grandma was not so sure. Over 40 years later she regrets that in those last moments together she refrained to take the opportunity to tell her she was loved. She made sure to tell Oskar.,br>
Foer's book is a work of literary art. Instead of composing a memoir or autobiographical story he created the story and illustrates a point while bringing the reader closer to a subject that subtly remains on the hush. Not being a true account the book allows experimental writing style and doing so leaves the reader still pondering not only the subject but how the author's revelations are portrayed.
Jonathan Safran Foer's point of view was portrayed in a fictional light through the form of a collection of letters from various people. The story line is told with a clearly written but unstructured feel. The letter approach was done in an interesting and unique manner with the reader is not quite sure where it is being led. Simultaneously we are taken through the grandparent's past as we live in Oskar's present with the characters speaking both to each other and to you. We end up comparing the Dresden bombing of 1945 in Germany to the current 9/11 tragedy in 2001, nearly half a century later. The letters were all to either to Oskar, or his father. Since his dead father never received any of the 40 years worth of letters (most of which we did not have to read, either!!), they all felt as if they Oskar was the recipient. They also felt like diary entries – and occasionally were almost too intimate. When looked at from afar there was very little communication actually going on between the characters. This is overlooked easily since there is so much going on for the reader.
People of all ages and backgrounds will easily identify with the content of the story because of the many relationships, seemingly peculiar reactions and emotions in light of the situations outlined through story filled letters. The manner is which this book was written, however, can much more easily be understood by the visual generation - the generation more willing to break traditional for the sake of style. Those who thoroughly enjoy and digest this book may see that it is more of a “scene” avant-garde piece of fiction designed to dig into the hearts of the readers and open their views of not only literature and its capabilities but also to the effects of tragedies on families and relationships and the mind.
The too-big-for-comprehension 9/11 tragedy was made to seem smaller and more close to home. Seeing through Oskar's eyes to the loss of a father and role model was endearing. Being a child, he is automatically more vulnerable and innocent. Immediately this softens the viewer in the direction of sympathy and readies them for the whatever concept about to be encountered.
One downfall I felt the book had was it did not expand on many objects that were introduced. For example, the key. Even when Oskar's search was over I felt the situation was unresolved. The key didn't seem relevant to anything else in the book. Digging things up in central park and the information about the 6th burrow added a small amount of character and relationship development between the nine- year old boy and his dead father. Other than that they were not taken anywhere, either. Things like that seemed more of a distraction to any prevalent themes than an addition.
The sex scenes with the grandparents did not particularly seem completely necessary. They illustrated the strange relationship between the two well, but I'm not sure they had to be quite as graphic. Why this information would ever be included in a letter to your nine year old grandson I'm not really sure. It makes the honest and believable story a little questionable. It was interesting, however, how the phrase, “I don't know why people ever make love...” is used so often - about as often as they make love.
The way Foer used the concept of clues on multiple levels was a respectable trait I found in the novel. Not only does he have Oskar constantly investigating to discover things as part of his quest to find the truth and get closer to his deceased father, he also develops character traits by interactions with the man in his life that he lost. On top of this, Foer himself uses hard-to-pick-up-on foreshadowing. One great example of this is when Oskar is investigating the art store in search of an answer regarding the word black written in a red pen. This is where (through strange art clerk logic) he finds that black is really Black, a name. In this scene of the novel the name Thomas Schell is found everywhere throughout the store scribbled and scratched in the customer testing supplies. The art clerk didn't know how often they changed the testing supplies and Oskar's father, Thomas Schell, had been dead nearly a year at this point. This foreshadows a major piece of interest to come, but the moment of reading it is just a bit confusing. It confuses Oskar as well as the reader so Foer cannot be accused of using unclear writing. He simply disguises the foreshadowing as part of the story line for Oskar's quest.
A member of his very own audience, Foer knows who he was writing to. The large task of attacking the silent taboos of world tragedies in the form of a fictional novel is daunting. At the same time it, in and of itself, creates immediate tension with potential readers. This is just the first tactic Foer uses to keep and expand the reader's attentions and interest. He takes us to a world easy to identify with on many levels. Foer is a young writer that, although extremely talented, educated, and successful, has a long way to go before reaching where I believe his potential as a writer stands. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a work of art. It is also a learning experience for Foer so that his next novel will be more tightly wound, structured and hopefully contain less dead-ends, given that is the direction he intends to head. This book was successful no matter how harsh his critics so long as Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close leaves readers with a new understanding that saying what is vital cannot wait. Maybe now someone will not wait. They will not procrastinate. What Booklist calls “undoubtedly the most beautiful and heartbreaking flip book in all of literature, ” may have just changed one person's entire life.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Good Grief
Good Grief
In America, the land of Hollywood and happily ever after endings, commercialized medication will put a smile on the face of the bereaved. Why trudge through the methodology of grief when a Prozac band-aid will wash away the pain? Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, written by Jonathon Foer, confronts 9/11 and the ensuing wall of grief that event encapsulated. He captures his readers with his unwavering craftsmanship and dances them through the process of grief and bereavement utilizing humor, open mindedness, and an understanding of the process needed to promote healing.
According to John Gardner, who wrote The Craft of Fiction, a great author’s power comes from his sane humanness and his absolute trust in his judgments and instincts. In other words, the reader must be able to identify with what the author writes, and the author has to have a basic understanding of what will, and what won’t work. The author must be able to sustain the reader’s suspension of disbelief.
In Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Oskar, the main character, is not your normal 9-year-old. In fact, at times, he’s unbelievable. For instance, his favorite book is A Brief History of Time, he speaks French, and has a subscription to National Geographic, but doesn’t know whom Winston Churchill, Walter Cronkite, or Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald is. He hasn’t heard of the Berlin Wall or the Bay of Pigs. But because Foer has mastered the craft of writing, it’s easy to become immersed in Oskar’s life, to suspend disbelief, and to keep reading.
In The Art of Fiction, Gardner discusses how a master writer engages a reader’s attention by depending heavily on precision of detail. This reminds me of Ann Lamont’s book, Bird by Bird. How do you write? By putting words on paper a bird, or detail, at a time, by showing, not telling, and by painting a picture out of words for the reader to envision.
Jonathan Foer, a master craftsman, describes the bombing of Dresden like this: “I walked over an old man. I walked over children, everyone was losing everyone, the bombs were like a waterfall, I ran through the streets and saw terrible things: legs and necks, I saw a woman whose blond hair and green dress were on fire, running with a silent baby in her arms. I saw humans melted into thick pools of liquid, three or four foot deep in places; I saw bodies crackling like embers (211)."
Foer engages our senses of sight and sound, and later he includes the sense of smell and taste. He captures us with his imagery and bang I feel like I am in Dresden experiencing the waterfall of bombs falling from the night sky.
Gardner states that “aesthetic arthritis” will set in if a writer tries to adhere to a set of rules and regulation when writing fiction. Foer’s writing doesn’t need a knee replacement. Foer disregards several rules along the way. His dialogue, for instance, is difficult to follow because it doesn’t obey the proper quotation format. However, it adds to the authors voice and to the characterization of Oskar.
Foer utilizes some interesting devices to layer the story, like single sentences and single words on an entire page, a page where the words run into each other until the page turns black, long paragraphs, and unusual photographs. The single sentences and the blackout page enhance the character of the grandfather, who does not speak and communicates with a notepad. The long paragraphs belong to the Grandmother, who writes a letter describing her life to Oskar. This device added depth to her character. I didn’t think the photographs added to the novel. Having taken a couple of digital photography classes, I found myself critiquing the quality of the photos instead of letting them flow with the story. They distracted me, and I chose to ignore them.
Oskar, a precocious 9-year-old, lost his dad in the twin towers on 9/11. Oskar shares some of his symptoms of acute grief. For instance, he writes, “A lot of the time I’d get that feeling like I was in the middle of a huge black ocean, or in deep space, but not in the fascinating way. It’s just that everything was incredibly far away from me (37).” Oskar also expresses his feelings of bereavement by saying he’s wearing heavy boots.
As Oskar attempts to process his grief, he bruises himself. His mom takes him to see a Dr. Fein. At the end of their session, Oskar tells Dr. Fein, “I’m gonna bury my feelings deep inside me. No matter how much I feel, I’m not going to let it out. If I have to cry, I’m gonna cry on the inside (203).” Afterward, Oskar’s mom talks to Dr. Fein. Oskar overhears Dr. Fein advising her to put Oskar in the hospital. I rejoiced when Oskar’s mom disagreed with the doctor.
Death touches the lives of many, and Oskar’s grandparents and his mother also demonstrate various ways to dive into the bereavement process. For instance, the grandparent’s witnessed the devastation of Dresden. It made the grandfather mute. After the death of my husband, I got a week off. When I returned to work, I was advised to get over it, to pull myself up by my bootstraps, and get back to the job at hand. Only it felt like my right hand had been cut off. It wouldn’t do as I commanded. It took the Grandfather, and me, years to come to terms with our losses. Foer’s writing demonstrates that sometimes, the grieving process takes a long time.
When I read the back cover of the book, I thought, I can’t read this novel. My son, Nikolas, died May 8, 2008, a day before his 18th birthday. What torturous teacher would want me to pick at what little scab had started to form? How could I bare it?
Of course I read the book and I’m glad that I did. Indeed, I’m passing it along to my daughter and other family members. I’m recommending it to the young writers I mentor and to my friends. This short, easy to read, somewhat confusing, madly entertaining book has helped me confront my grief. Foer shared the in your face, all encompassing overwhelming feelings of complete and total loss of control, that familiar falling feeling I experience every time I think of my son, in the pages of his book. Life goes on in spite of my pain. It was refreshing to read about it, to know that I’m not alone, not crazy, don’t need medication, and yes, I can survive.
In America, the land of Hollywood and happily ever after endings, commercialized medication will put a smile on the face of the bereaved. Why trudge through the methodology of grief when a Prozac band-aid will wash away the pain? Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, written by Jonathon Foer, confronts 9/11 and the ensuing wall of grief that event encapsulated. He captures his readers with his unwavering craftsmanship and dances them through the process of grief and bereavement utilizing humor, open mindedness, and an understanding of the process needed to promote healing.
According to John Gardner, who wrote The Craft of Fiction, a great author’s power comes from his sane humanness and his absolute trust in his judgments and instincts. In other words, the reader must be able to identify with what the author writes, and the author has to have a basic understanding of what will, and what won’t work. The author must be able to sustain the reader’s suspension of disbelief.
In Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Oskar, the main character, is not your normal 9-year-old. In fact, at times, he’s unbelievable. For instance, his favorite book is A Brief History of Time, he speaks French, and has a subscription to National Geographic, but doesn’t know whom Winston Churchill, Walter Cronkite, or Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald is. He hasn’t heard of the Berlin Wall or the Bay of Pigs. But because Foer has mastered the craft of writing, it’s easy to become immersed in Oskar’s life, to suspend disbelief, and to keep reading.
In The Art of Fiction, Gardner discusses how a master writer engages a reader’s attention by depending heavily on precision of detail. This reminds me of Ann Lamont’s book, Bird by Bird. How do you write? By putting words on paper a bird, or detail, at a time, by showing, not telling, and by painting a picture out of words for the reader to envision.
Jonathan Foer, a master craftsman, describes the bombing of Dresden like this: “I walked over an old man. I walked over children, everyone was losing everyone, the bombs were like a waterfall, I ran through the streets and saw terrible things: legs and necks, I saw a woman whose blond hair and green dress were on fire, running with a silent baby in her arms. I saw humans melted into thick pools of liquid, three or four foot deep in places; I saw bodies crackling like embers (211)."
Foer engages our senses of sight and sound, and later he includes the sense of smell and taste. He captures us with his imagery and bang I feel like I am in Dresden experiencing the waterfall of bombs falling from the night sky.
Gardner states that “aesthetic arthritis” will set in if a writer tries to adhere to a set of rules and regulation when writing fiction. Foer’s writing doesn’t need a knee replacement. Foer disregards several rules along the way. His dialogue, for instance, is difficult to follow because it doesn’t obey the proper quotation format. However, it adds to the authors voice and to the characterization of Oskar.
Foer utilizes some interesting devices to layer the story, like single sentences and single words on an entire page, a page where the words run into each other until the page turns black, long paragraphs, and unusual photographs. The single sentences and the blackout page enhance the character of the grandfather, who does not speak and communicates with a notepad. The long paragraphs belong to the Grandmother, who writes a letter describing her life to Oskar. This device added depth to her character. I didn’t think the photographs added to the novel. Having taken a couple of digital photography classes, I found myself critiquing the quality of the photos instead of letting them flow with the story. They distracted me, and I chose to ignore them.
Oskar, a precocious 9-year-old, lost his dad in the twin towers on 9/11. Oskar shares some of his symptoms of acute grief. For instance, he writes, “A lot of the time I’d get that feeling like I was in the middle of a huge black ocean, or in deep space, but not in the fascinating way. It’s just that everything was incredibly far away from me (37).” Oskar also expresses his feelings of bereavement by saying he’s wearing heavy boots.
As Oskar attempts to process his grief, he bruises himself. His mom takes him to see a Dr. Fein. At the end of their session, Oskar tells Dr. Fein, “I’m gonna bury my feelings deep inside me. No matter how much I feel, I’m not going to let it out. If I have to cry, I’m gonna cry on the inside (203).” Afterward, Oskar’s mom talks to Dr. Fein. Oskar overhears Dr. Fein advising her to put Oskar in the hospital. I rejoiced when Oskar’s mom disagreed with the doctor.
Death touches the lives of many, and Oskar’s grandparents and his mother also demonstrate various ways to dive into the bereavement process. For instance, the grandparent’s witnessed the devastation of Dresden. It made the grandfather mute. After the death of my husband, I got a week off. When I returned to work, I was advised to get over it, to pull myself up by my bootstraps, and get back to the job at hand. Only it felt like my right hand had been cut off. It wouldn’t do as I commanded. It took the Grandfather, and me, years to come to terms with our losses. Foer’s writing demonstrates that sometimes, the grieving process takes a long time.
When I read the back cover of the book, I thought, I can’t read this novel. My son, Nikolas, died May 8, 2008, a day before his 18th birthday. What torturous teacher would want me to pick at what little scab had started to form? How could I bare it?
Of course I read the book and I’m glad that I did. Indeed, I’m passing it along to my daughter and other family members. I’m recommending it to the young writers I mentor and to my friends. This short, easy to read, somewhat confusing, madly entertaining book has helped me confront my grief. Foer shared the in your face, all encompassing overwhelming feelings of complete and total loss of control, that familiar falling feeling I experience every time I think of my son, in the pages of his book. Life goes on in spite of my pain. It was refreshing to read about it, to know that I’m not alone, not crazy, don’t need medication, and yes, I can survive.
Review: “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” by Jonathan Safran Foer
Written by Teri Lawen
October 1, 2008
Something and nothing or extreme and incredible? Jonathan Safran Foer presents these as options to living in his book “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.” A book so profoundly exhilarating one can hardly bear to put it down.
Foer begins by introducing us to the inventions of a nine year old child, inventions to solve all the world’s problems as only a nine year old could: a birdseed shirt for those times when we non-winged humans need to take flight and make a quick escape; a device that could sense when the person inside an ambulance was approaching a loved one nearby and would emit a message to them; a teakettle whose spout turns into a mouth and provides comfort by reading in the voice of his father, who was killed in the 9/11 tragedies. Wait…death of his father? Killed 9/11? At this point, many readers might think, “Whoa, I’m not ready to combine literary fiction with the catastrophic, emotional attacks on our precious United States soil - the wounds are too fresh, the scars to deep.
While the backdrop is 9/11, the book’s focus is on loss, coping, and eventual healing. It is no coincidence that Foer’s writing includes such powerfully traumatic events as 9/11, the bombings of Dresden and Hiroshima. These horrific events remind us, as Foer’s character of Grandma put it, that we should never assume there will be a tomorrow or that it is “unnecessary” to share feelings today. “It is always necessary” as there may not be a tomorrow.
The book captures the reader by presenting so many questions and peculiarities that along with Oskar, the nine year old protagonist, the reader finds them self searching. Oskar searching for the meaning of the key found in a vase in his father’s closet, and the reader searching for the meaning of the story. Along the way, the reader becomes emotionally connected to the characters and their relationships. Foer has something for everyone: the struggles of a boy dealing with the loss of his father; a mother dealing with the loss of a husband, and the emotional disconnect of her son; a grandmother coping with the loss of a sister, son, and an estranged husband; and a grandfather who coped by leaving his family because of his fear of losing the ones he loves.
Oskar lives life extreme and incredible. Everything he feels, sees or does is with depth. He is extremely curious about self-defense; the tambourine plays incredibly fast in his “The Flight of the Bumblebee” ring tone; his imaginary inverted skyscraper built underground so when the elevator button was pushed, that particular floor would rise up—“extremely useful” according to Oskar. Foer contrasts this intensity with the indifference shared between Grandma and Grandpa. Grandma and Grandpa established zones within their apartment that represented either “something” or “nothing.” In the nothing zones, they could disappear, not exist as their lives together eventually did.
“Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” forces us into the grieving process of its characters and enriches our lives with hope at their ability to cope and persevere; challenging us to live our lives as either something and nothing or extreme and incredible.
October 1, 2008
Something and nothing or extreme and incredible? Jonathan Safran Foer presents these as options to living in his book “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.” A book so profoundly exhilarating one can hardly bear to put it down.
Foer begins by introducing us to the inventions of a nine year old child, inventions to solve all the world’s problems as only a nine year old could: a birdseed shirt for those times when we non-winged humans need to take flight and make a quick escape; a device that could sense when the person inside an ambulance was approaching a loved one nearby and would emit a message to them; a teakettle whose spout turns into a mouth and provides comfort by reading in the voice of his father, who was killed in the 9/11 tragedies. Wait…death of his father? Killed 9/11? At this point, many readers might think, “Whoa, I’m not ready to combine literary fiction with the catastrophic, emotional attacks on our precious United States soil - the wounds are too fresh, the scars to deep.
While the backdrop is 9/11, the book’s focus is on loss, coping, and eventual healing. It is no coincidence that Foer’s writing includes such powerfully traumatic events as 9/11, the bombings of Dresden and Hiroshima. These horrific events remind us, as Foer’s character of Grandma put it, that we should never assume there will be a tomorrow or that it is “unnecessary” to share feelings today. “It is always necessary” as there may not be a tomorrow.
The book captures the reader by presenting so many questions and peculiarities that along with Oskar, the nine year old protagonist, the reader finds them self searching. Oskar searching for the meaning of the key found in a vase in his father’s closet, and the reader searching for the meaning of the story. Along the way, the reader becomes emotionally connected to the characters and their relationships. Foer has something for everyone: the struggles of a boy dealing with the loss of his father; a mother dealing with the loss of a husband, and the emotional disconnect of her son; a grandmother coping with the loss of a sister, son, and an estranged husband; and a grandfather who coped by leaving his family because of his fear of losing the ones he loves.
Oskar lives life extreme and incredible. Everything he feels, sees or does is with depth. He is extremely curious about self-defense; the tambourine plays incredibly fast in his “The Flight of the Bumblebee” ring tone; his imaginary inverted skyscraper built underground so when the elevator button was pushed, that particular floor would rise up—“extremely useful” according to Oskar. Foer contrasts this intensity with the indifference shared between Grandma and Grandpa. Grandma and Grandpa established zones within their apartment that represented either “something” or “nothing.” In the nothing zones, they could disappear, not exist as their lives together eventually did.
“Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” forces us into the grieving process of its characters and enriches our lives with hope at their ability to cope and persevere; challenging us to live our lives as either something and nothing or extreme and incredible.
Jonathan Safran Foer
Our first adventure on this website will be to review the book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. These Advanced Writing students have spent the last month reading and evaluating Foer's book and have many exciting ideas to share. Enjoy!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)