xxxxxxx

There are quite a few novels that you either love or hate. Not so many that you can simultaneously both love AND hate. To admire there’s the high tide imaginative vitality of the writing; to irritate the relentless contrived cutesy-cutesy tugging at the heartstrings.

EL&IC purports to be a novel about big bangs - 9/11, Hiroshima and Dresden - but you might say this novel is more about the consequences of over indulging feeling. There’s Oskar who misses his dad who dies on 9/11 and there’s his grandfather who loses the love of his life in the bombing of Dresden and, melodramatically, refuses to speak from that day on. The Oskar narrative just about works; the grandfather narrative is simply annoying in its whimsy and pantomime absurdity. And as such provides no aesthetically invigorating connection between the two horror days of history. In fact Dresden, like Hiroshima, seems a gratuitous service station in the novel. It’s also a novel that has more sympathy for the male than the female. The practical tenacity of Oskar’s mother in the face of grief is given short shrift as is the case with the abandoned grandmother. It’s the males who get the best lines and make things happen in Foer’s world.

Essentially it’s a fairy story. A bit like Benigni’s Life is Beautiful in its attempt to excavate a life affirming beauty from unspeakable horror. Also irritating is that it borrows riffs from Bellow’s Herzog and Grass’s the Tin Drum as well as shoplifting wholesale Amis’ created universe in Time’s Arrow where everything happens backwards.

An entertaining read but not quite great literature. Foer is still very young though.

One of the most beautifully written and impactful stories ive read.

n   “Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.”n

I could write an endless review about this book and how amazing it is... but I'm not going too, because I would never want to take or give away anything about this book. You'll want to feel every emotion this book gives off. such a powerful, beautiful, and moving novel.

i have a soft spot for jonathan safran foer.

this is true even though chances seem high that he is quite pretentious (shoutout to that natalie portman email correspondence, cringe both in content and in the fact that he thought they were in love because of it and left his poor wife (if she has a gofundme i'll truly donate. talk about a fate worse than death)).

it's true even though i've only read two of his books and will probably never know more than that.

and it's true in spite of the fact that in both books, his writing has been heavy-handed, and self-indulgent, and generally of the type of unrelenting style that makes it very difficult to lose yourself in the act of reading.

in short, this book is unbelievably, almost disarmingly pretentious, which is better at some points than others, but if you allow yourself to look past it and ignore certain perspectives entirely (yes that does mean half the book), it can still be a good time.

the flaws of safran foer's books — characters and scenes that border on the fantastical, a pervasive feeling of try-hard-iness (to coin a word) — are also their greatest strengths. in this book, this culminates in our dual points of view. oskar is so unforgettable, even if he is completely unrealistic, that it seems like an unforgivable crime that this book has other (far worse) perspectives.

but if you can ignore them, this book is a treat.

bottom line: this book is corny, and overwrought, and silly, and unrealistic, and i have a fondness for at least half of it anyway.

3.5

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original review

i reread this book as part of project five star, in which i reread old favorites and see if they're still favorites. the review from when this was one is below.

WARNING: EARNEST REVIEW AHEAD. Very genuine and emotional and generally gross.

I love Jonathan Safran Foer. I love him even though chances seem high that he is quite pretentious (have you read that New York Times piece made up of email correspondence between Natalie Portman and himself? Perma-cringe). I love him even though I’ve only read two of his books and may never read more than that. I love him even though absolutely the only thing I care to know about him is his writing.

When someone writes the way he does, there’s no response to have, for me, other than that.

The flaws of his books - characters and scenes that can border on the fantastical, a pervasive feeling of try-hard-iness (to coin a word) - are so easily overlooked. Not even, actually. I fell and fall so deeply in love with his writing that these things seem like positives too.

I like that our main character, Oskar Schell, feels a tad too big and vibrant for the world. It makes me love him harder, experience his too-big feelings more. I especially like his unbelievability because he’s surrounded by lovely mundanity: flawed but loving parents, countless beautiful and unremarkable people of New York.

I love, love, love his quest through the city to meet everyone he can with the last name Black. I like the impossibility of it, the various things that come together to make it “possible” when even those various things seem deeply unrealistic.

I like the sometimes-eye-rolly ways that the author plays with formatting and perspective and language. It doesn’t take me out. It wraps me up more.

Bottom line: I like all the things that make this book beautiful and completely one of a kind. Even the over-the-top things.

Catching up…

It is hard to believe it has been 23 years since the tragic attack that took place September 11, 2001. It is always interesting to me how so many Americans who are old enough (including me) recall the day where they were when they heard the news. I was at my place of employment, the college I worked, and we were having a celebration of life in our Student Center Conference Room for a long-time colleague who had recently passed away. And, then the news hit us. How do you erase those moments of disbelief or horror? There are still so many who have no personal memory of that day, either because they were too young or not yet born. It will always be a day…We can never forget.

“If we learn nothing else from this tragedy, we learn that life is short and there is no time for hate.” – Sandy Dahl, Wife of Flight 93 Pilot Jason Dahl

It felt only fitting to share my review of this book today.

I read this years ago, and also had the opportunity to watch the movie. Which did you prefer? I believe I appreciated both.

Oskar Schell is a 9-year-old New Yorker. He is rather precocious whose restlessness and social confidence tend to get him into some predicaments while his loving parents remain off-stage. Usually coming home just in time to rescue him from himself.

This is truly a character-driven story, which not only is paying attention to the wise-child, but also flavoring in a lot of other New York characters who add to his adventure. Whether it is the doorman, or others, everyone is looking out for Oskar in their own way.

Oskar is on a mission. His father has left him a few telephone messages, which help to create a certain level of mystery as he searches for a lock that fits a key that he found while snooping around in his father’s closet. So, off we go with Oskar on a treasure hunt.

There is also another story taking place through letters from Oskar’s German immigrant grandparents. Will the letters and Oskar’s lock-quest connect?

Will the story be in the searching instead of the finding? Considering that 9/11 looms in the background, there is much to appreciate about Oskar’s quest and his emotional state-of-presence.

And, readers can’t help but be awed by the whimsical nature of Oskar’s adventure, along with the emotional heaviness of what surrounds him. This will not be a typical book. But it definitely brings out all the feels.

An Abuse of Childhood

Traumatic tragedy makes good newspaper copy, especially when it involves children. The combination of horror and sentiment seems irresistible. But does it really serve for good fiction? I have my doubts, at least in the case of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I can’t be entirely certain because, as with so much in my advanced age, the book drags up so many childhood memories from my own sub-conscious that I’m wary of my own judgment.

My psychological connection with Foer’s book is entirely coincidental but personally significant. My name is Black, a family name which gives the book its dramatic trajectory. I was born in New York City and my family members could have been on the fictional list of several hundred Blacks from the telephone directory sought out by Oskar (my grandson’s name, with a ‘k’), the young protagonist, who wants to know how his father perished on 9/11. My grandmother is buried in Calvary Cemetery which is, I think, where Oskar’s father is buried. Secondly, at the age of nine, I too like Oskar experienced the trauma of an air disaster when a military bomber crashed into the house next door to my suburban home, killing the three crew members in front of me.* This was in 1956 (the plane was similar to that mentioned by Foer as crashing into the Empire State Building In 1945).

n  n

None of this history occurred to me until I was halfway through the book, suggesting perhaps that the historical facts might be more tightly bound with their emotional residue than I had ever realized. The line “Parents are always more knowledgeable than their children, and children are always smarter than their parents,” stopped me short. After the crash I recall feeling very distinctly that I knew much more about it than the adults did despite their maturity. I certainly didn’t believe their vacuous assurances that we were safe. I was the expert on the matter

Not only did I witness the crash, including the pilot’s waving me off to take cover as the plane spun down, but I also presumed to understand - or at least feel - much more than my patents how dangerous it was to be alive (it was indeed very loud and very close). There had been three other similar incidents during the previous year; and one only a few months later that I witnessed from some distance. I didn’t have the vocabulary or the argumentative ability to express the situation but I knew with certainty that this was not an intelligent place to call home.

The nearby Air Force facility was a hive of Cold War pilot training. The aircraft were all WWII bombers and transports. And the crews were part time reservists. So not perhaps the most experienced flyers in the service, in equipment long past its retirement date - what could go wrong? We lived under the approach path for the main runway. I was acutely aware of the Doppler sound of every plane in the sky and literally held my breath until those I knew were landing passed overhead. The weekends were worst, when there was a continuous stream of touch and go landings for the Flying Boxcars, vehicles as antiquated as their name suggested, well into the night.

Like Oskar I can remember that “I needed all of my concentration for being brave.” Particularly since no one else in the house took the situation seriously. I did not succeed. My fear was as intense as Oskar’s as he stood on the observation deck of the Empire State Building “the whole time... imagining a plane coming at the building, just below us. I didn't want to, but I couldn't stop.” And just like Oskar I felt myself “an obvious potential target” for many months, even years, after.

At some point the fear attenuated (or was sufficiently repressed) to allow a reasonably normal life. And within several years the base was closed for safety reasons (someone was listening even if it wasn’t my parents). But the psychic effects lingered, consciously as a sort of vague resentment for the imposition of unrecognized suffering; and, I’m sure, unconsciously in a variety of minor neuroses. But I find myself even more than six decades later resonating with a comment by one of Foer’s other characters: “The end of suffering does not justify the suffering, and so there is no end to suffering.”

And that, I suppose, is the rationale for ‘trauma fiction’. The event itself is news. The cause of the event is documentary rapportage. The consequences of the event are where fiction is necessary. Strict rationality succumbs to emotional necessity. There is no cause and effect only complex interactions of unresolved suffering. This arises from the event itself, and from all the other tragic events that persist in memory and physical conditions.

So it is proper that Foer connects 9/11 to Dresden and Hiroshima and the Holocaust as well as to the ‘routine’ accidental and natural deaths we all experience. There is an ecology of tragedy which links them. And I think it’s appropriate to consider the aftermath of 9/11 in terms of what is an irrational and essentially senseless search for the precise nature of a death which can’t even be documented. Even Oskar knows that “The more I found, the less I understood” about his father when he was alive. But he feels compelled to continue the task. Death gives us a reason for searching, if for nothing else for its meaning. Not having something to search for is worse than death. Death in its own way provides hope. If I read Foer correctly, this is his theme, and a rather interesting one.

What I am less sure about is the use of a child’s perspective. Oskar, in addition to his trauma, is somewhat autistic. This gives him an aura of vulnerability. But he is also highly articulate and charming, traits which carry the narrative along with considerable wit and even humor. The problem is that the two characters are contradictory even if Foer tries to smooth over the joins. Oskar moves in and out of these two personas, even jumping into a third occasionally as a juvenile sage, who advises the various failing adults. This is jarring and doesn’t contribute to the narrative.

This choice of an immature protagonist is, I think, a mistake. It does create a story that sells but not a believable character. At least I couldn’t have possibly done what Oskar does and says at the age of nine. He seems a sort of portmanteau child/adult. Children, no matter how clever they are, do not think and act like Oskar (like planning an carrying out an exhumation!). Often he’s an adult in a child’s body, doing therapeutic work which can only be engaged in after substantially more experience. Children are hopeful by instinct; they are instinctive searchers. But they don’t philosophise about it. It is adults who have to be reminded that searching is the essence of living. Oskar is, in short, a fantasy not a fictional character, an abuse of childhood, but an instructive one.

* I had been standing approximately 15 feet behind where the two fireman are in upper right of the photo when the plane struck, close enough to see the faces of the men in the cockpit.

n  n
n  n

Oskar, a thoughtful kid full of quirks and handicaps, finds a key. So the journey he goes on to find its (and his own) place in the world should be inspiring at least. But although Oskar learns all sorts of interesting things everywhere he goes, he never really makes any progress. And similarly, neither does the story.

Right from the start, the prose is sharp, and the characters stand out. The father particularly is just as likable as can be. But the story as a whole moves in too many directions without ever really going anywhere. Combine that with the different perspectives, and it comes out as a scrambled mess.

It feels like George RR Martin and Chuck Palahniuk teamed up to write this. It might be awesome, but it just doesn't work.

اگر خورشید منفجر شه تا ٨ دقیقه هیچ کس متوجه ماجرا نمی‌شه، چون ٨ دقیقه طول می‌کشه تا نور به ما برسه. تا ٨ دقیقه زمین همچنان روشن می‌مونه و گرماش رو حفظ می‌کنه. یه سال از مرگ بابا گذشته، احساس می‌کنم هشت دقیقه‌ی من داره کم‌کم تموم می‌شه

داستان از این قرار است که کودک نابغه‌ای که پدر خود را در واقعه یازدهم سپتامبر از دست داده، یک سال پس از مرگ پدر بطور اتفاقی کلیدی را میان وسایل پدرش پیدا می‌کند و به تصور اینکه این کلید هم مانند بازی‌های پیشینش با پدر، سرنخی برای یک ماجراجویی و سفر اکتشافی‌ست دست به کار می‌شود تا قفلی را که متعلق به این کلید است پیدا کند. اما این تمام داستان نیست. مخاطب در فصل دوم و با تغییر راوی متوجه می‌شود که با یک داستان پیچیده و چند روایتی روبروست، کافی‌ست تا ثانیه‌ای تمرکز خود را روی داستان از دست بدهد تا به ناکجای متن کشیده شده و مجبور به دوباره‌خوانی گردد. در واقع داستان سه راوی دارد، اسکار شل(کودک و کاراکتر اصلی)، پدر بزرگ اسکار (توماس شل) و مادربزرگ اسکار. هر یک از راوی‌ها در خلال داستان، بخشی از ماجرای خود را روایت می‌کند تا هر تکه، مانند پازل در کنار هم قرار بگیرد و همانطور که اسکار در مسیر حل معمای پدر پیش می‌رود، مخاطب هم موفق به حل معمای زندگی خاندان دردکشیده‌ی شل‌ها شود
بعلت درهمپیچدگی روایت‌ها، یافتن مضمون واحد که بر تمام بخش‌های کتاب دلالت کند کمی دشوار به‌نظر می‌رسد. جنگ، از دست دادن نزدیکان، بر باد رفتن آرزوها و زندگی‌ها، جستجو‌ها و در نهایت روبرو شدن با شکست همچون دیواری بلند و آجری میان تمام کاراکترهای داستان مشترک است. تنها پس از پایان کتاب و در نظر گرفتن داستان هر سه کاراکتر می‌توان به مضمون آن پی برد، شاید بهترین تعبیری که بتوان برای این امر به‌کار برد، تشبیه داستان به ظهور نگاتیو عکاسی باشد. باید تمام آن را خواند و با کلیتش در دل پروراند تا حقیقت داستان آرام آرام ظاهر گردد
به فصل اول برمی‌گردیم، دهم سپتامبر، یک روز پیش از مرگ پدرِ اسکار. توماس، اسکار را در تخت خوابانده و برای او قصه‌ای از محله‌ی ششم نیویورک تعریف می‌کند (نیویورک ٥ محل بیشتر ندارد). در این فصل اشاره‌ای به محتوای قصه نمی‌شود و تنها در نیمه‌ی دوم کتاب است که روایت به اسکار بر می‌گردد و آن قصه برای مخاطب بازگو می‌شود: ماجرای قصه از این قرار است که روزگاری نیویورک ٦ محله داشت، اما منطقه‌ی ششم به مرور از شهر جدا شده و اینچ به اینچ از آن دور می‌شود. فاصله گرفتن تدریجی ادامه پیدا می‌کند تا روزی که دیگر هیچ‌کس نمی‌تواند میان منطقه و شهر تردد کن�� و دیگر حتی صدای دختر و پسر قصه هیچ‌جوره به هم نمی‌رسد. سال‌ها می‌گذرد و اکنون منطقه‌ی ششم در جایی نامعلوم در قطب جنوب شناور است، در دنیایی یخ زده و خاکستری. تصور من بر این است که این قصه‌، تمثیلی برای زندگی تمام کاراکترهای داستان است: تمثیلی از ماندن، از دست دادن و مواجهه با فقدان و یا رها کردن، عبور و رفتن. این نقطه‌ی مشترک تمام شخصیت‌های داستان است و الگوی "رفتن" / "ماندن و از دست دادن" به شکل‌های گوناگون در داستان تکرار می‌شود: توماس آنا و فرزندش را در بمباران هوایی از دست می‌دهد، توماس این بار از وحشت از دست دادنِ دوباره‌ی فرزندش، همسر باردار خود را رها می‌کند و می‌رود، اسکار هم که پدر خود را در حادثه از دست داده. شاید این با وضعیت ما هم تطابق داشته باشد. شاید هر کدام از ما هم محله‌ی ششم نیویورکی داشته باشیم که یا خود در آن ساکنیم و یا بخشی از وجودمان را به آن سپرده‌ایم؛ نتیجه‌ی انتخابی سخت و گریزناپذیر در بزنگاه زندگی که باید میان رفتن و از دست دادن یکی را انتخاب کرد
پی‌رنگ داستان را می‌توان در نحوه‌ی مواجهه هر کاراکتر با فقدان بخشی از وجودش یافت: داستان مادر بزرگ نسبتا سر راست است، او هرچند سخت اما در نهایت رفتن همسرش را می‌پذیرد. حال آنکه دست از جستجو و تلاش برای به تعویق انداختن پذیرش مرگ پدر بر نمی‌دارد. بر خلاف انتظار من، در پایان داستان کلیشه‌ای انتظار خواننده را نمی‌کشد. اسکار در پایان داستان (برخلاف فیلم) رستگار نمی‌شود و آخرین تصویری که از اسکار در ذهن مخاطب می‌ماند سرشار از حسرت و اندوه است

رمان در ژانر پست‌مدرن قرار می‌گیرد. روایت غیرخطی، تغییر پیاپی‌ راوی و تایپوگرافی عجیب و البته دوست‌داشتنی کتاب را می‌توان از دلایل عمده‌ی این طبقه‌بندی به حساب آورد. فیلم اقتابسی این اثر با همین عنوان در سال ۲۰۱۱ (به کارگردانی استفن دالدری و بازی تام هنکس) اکران شد. فیلم نسبت به کتاب، حذفیات بسیار دارد و پایان فیلم هم تا حدی متفاوت از پایان داستان است. تا پیش از دیدن فیلم تصوری از اینکه فیلم‌نامه‌نویس و کارگردان چگونه توانسته‌اند چنین داستان غیرخطی‌ای را تبدیل به فیلم کنند نداشتم، امری که به خوبی از عهده‌ی آن برآمده بودند. پیشنهاد می‌کنم بعد از خواندن کتاب، فیلم هم دیده شود. آلبوم موسیقی متن هم جدا از فیلم، به عنوان یک شاهکار ارزش گوش دادن دوباره و دوباره را دارد

I’m Oskar with a k like Liza with a Z cause Oskar with a k is krazy (also kind, klever and kultured). I’m 10 going on Dalai Lama. I make jewellery (I know!) and collect butterflies who have died naturally and play a tambourine constantly. You have to wonder why no one has killed me since I must drive people insane with my maximum cuteness. Oh, and have shortwave radio conversations with my grandma over in another desirable residence in the Upper West Side. I have empathy for every living thing including you. This great and terrible tragedy happened to me so nobody, not even those horrid GR people, can make fun of me, even when I’m so twee a hobbit would thwow up all over the nearest elf. This is the way I speak with my Mom :

“Mom?” “Yes?” “Nothing.”
“What is it, baby?” “Well it’s just that wouldn’t it be great if mattresses had spaces for your arm, so that when you rolled on to your side, you could fit just right?” “That would be nice.” “And good for your back, probably, because it would let your spine be straight, which I know is important.” “That is important.” “Also, it would make snuggling easier… And making snuggling easier is important.” “Very.”

Here, you can use this bin, or the sink, whichever. I’m so kloying and keen to make everyone’s lives better by befriending deaf centenarians and lonely billionaires and dragging them off on eccentric heart-twanging dead-father-related quests that Amelie from that kooky French movie Amelie would be out-cloyed and out-eccentriced at every turn & would have to throw herself out of my window wearing a birdseed dress which is an invention of mine for suicides by defenestration as the birdseed would attract birds who would carry the person aloft & thus prevent their self-destruction. Okay maybe when the birdseed was gone then the person would plummet, but I don’t think that far about any of my kooky schemes, magical children who could never possibly exist don’t do that.

My brain is just naturally like Pixar HD.

I’ll invent an invisibility suit that has a camera on my back that takes video of everything behind me and plays it onto a plasma screen that I’ll wear on my front, which will cover everything but my face. It’ll look like I’m not there at all.

You may be wondering how I got to be like I am. Well, there’s a long line of cutesypie narrators in my family. My grandfather, frinstance. He’s tweer than me. Is that a word? It is now. He explained How I Met Your Grandmother like this:

I had so much to ask her, “Do you lie on your stomach and look for things under the ice? Do you like plays? Do you like it when you can hear something before you can see it?... in the middle of my youth, in the middle of Europe, in between our two villages, on the verge of losing everything, I bumped into something and was knocked to the ground… at first I thought I’d walked into a tree, but then the tree became a person…

I would like to explain that I am depressed about my father but as I’m in this novel I don’t call it that, I say I’m wearing heavy boots. I would also like to say that what with all this smiling through tears, the grandma, the grandfather, the old guy who can hear again, the mom who is probably schmoozing with some guy in the next room, the sad quest to find the Blacks of New York, AND 9/11 AND let's throw Hitler into the mix, you don’t have to look any further for a dictionary definition of emotional blackmail.

Perhaps I'm just stupid, but I don't get this book, nor am I really crazy about it.

It's a little too hip for me, in the sense that I don't think anybody really gets what the hell Foer is trying to say, but because it's obscure everyone likes it.

Or maybe I'm just looking too much into the book. But I found myself having to read and re-read pages over and over again to make sense of it all.

It doesn't do it for me, but I might try to get through it one last time, mainly because I feel very guilty if I don't finish a book, despite how bad as I think it is.

Κι αν δεν σταματήσεις ποτέ να φαντάζεσαι;

Ο Όσκαρ του Φοερ, μου φέρνει στο μυαλό τον Όσκαρ του Τενεκεδένιου Ταμπούρλου.
Αντισυμβατικός , μονίμως ανήσυχος, προσπαθεί να δεχτεί αυτά που του συμβαίνουν μόνο όταν τα καταλάβει. Όχι απαραιτήτως στην πλήρη τους διάσταση. Έστω να συλλέξει όσο περισσότερα μπορεί γύρω από αυτά. Τα γεγονότα που συνθέτουν τον περιβάλλοντα κόσμο. Πόσο μάλλον όταν αυτά του στερούν τον πατέρα. Οπότε και επαναπροσδιορίζει τον πατέρα ως έννοια συλλέγοντας ίχνη του

Μερικές φορές ακούω τα κόκαλα μου να ζοριζονται κάτω από το βάρος όλων των ζωών που δεν έζησα.