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.