Tout est illuminé

“And then they stopped all of the tanks and for a moment I was so foolish to think that it was over, that they had decided to return to Germany and end the war because nobody likes war not even those who survive it, not even the winners.”

When I started this book I was thinking it is a pretentious contrived work of experimental fiction that I usually don't connect with, but I ended up really liking it. I love these kinds of surprises which push me to give more than one chance to genres of books I didn't immediately find compelling. The narrative is by no means traditional, the non-linear fragmented structure jumps around in time, and there are stories within the stories told by three different narrators, switching style, language and viewpoint, sometimes without satisfying conclusion. We are following the main character Jonathan (the author himself) in a journey across Ukrania in the quest of finding the mysterious woman Augustina, who may, or may not save his Jewish grandfather from the Nazis. As the stories of Jonathan's ancestors unravel more and more emotional and compelling stories of Ukrainian people are being displayed in the magic realism history of the village of Trachimbrod, from 1791 to the arrival of the Nazi army in 1941. I was definitely highly interested and emotionally and mentally invested in stories, and considering that connection happens really with me and this type of literary fiction, I consider this a good book, but I think it would benefit from simplification but then again, it would lose a bit of its quirkiness and uniqueness, especially for the genre of historical fiction. I loved the arrogant trippiness of the prose throughout and I want to try more Safran in the future for sure. I think fans of work similar to David Grossman's A Horse Walks into a Bar would immensely enjoy Everything is illuminated, in my opinion, much more vivid and better-crafted work.

“It's true, I am afraid of dying. I am afraid of the world moving forward without me, of my absence going unnoticed, or worse, being some natural force propelling life on. Is it selfish? Am I such a bad person for dreaming of a world that ends when I do?”

My first Foer.

Not sure if he's a genius or overrated or both. There are literary devices in here that made me roll my eyes on multiple occasions, for instance: 1) inserting the author, Jonathan Safran Foer, into the novel (and not like Alfred Hitchcock and Stan Lee have cameos in their movies; Jonathan is present in this book), 2) abandoning all grammar and sentence structure to stress that something horrifying and tragic is happening ( ...or that Foer is ready to end his novel), and 3) relying heavily on magical realism (I'm normally not a fan).

The above devices can reek of pretension in lesser hands, so until I decided which camp Foer's hands fell in, my hands were on the "abort" button multiple times while reading this.

But.

Some of the razzle dazzles used by Foer (the author of Everything is Illuminated, not the Foer in the novel) were way more successful. And the story is intriguing. One that definitely creeps up on you:

Jonathan travels to the Ukraine in search of a woman named Augustine who saved his grandfather from the Nazis during World War II. He enlists the help of Alex, the translator of a Ukrainian touring company. Accompanying the two are Alex's grandfather (the driver) and the grandfather's "seeing-eye bitch" Sammy Davis Junior, Junior. (A comedy, you most likely will presume? Ha!)

Shit goes down instead. And, as the title promises, everything is illuminated. (Except, everything actually wasn't for me. This book left me with a lot of unanswered questions. ...But in a good way; stay with me.)

Jonathan and Alex trade manuscripts after their journey. The novel is structured in the form of 1) letters (while we read Alex's letters to Jonathan, we never read any letters by Jonathan, only his manuscripts), and 2) the actual manuscripts. Alex's manuscript is more straightforward, and about their travels. Early on, it serves as the humor in the book. Jonathan's manuscript starts out very grandiose, covering the birth of his great, great, great, great, great (forget how many "greats," but there were a lot) grandmother Brod in the Jewish shtetl Trachimbrod, and is full of mysticism and symbolism.

Over the course of the novel, truths are revealed about both Jonathan and Alex's grandfathers. To say more verges on spoiler-territory.

I've covered both the plot and my frustrations above. Below are the strengths:

1: I like nonlinear stories, especially those centered around a life-altering event. This story has that going for it in spades. It feels like a mystery, and the author rewards you for paying attention, like you are solving a puzzle.

2. There are sections that read like John Irving (never a bad thing): tangents that show absurdity, but also humanity, thus making the tragic seem ridiculous. (Brod and the Kolker's love story, for instance, and lame-armed Safran--the grandfather, not Jonathan Safran Foer (...Jesus)--becoming a town gigolo of sorts.)

3) The character of Alex. Alex starts out a bit like Borat: funny, bad at English (hot damn does he love that thesaurus!), and hard to take seriously. However, the transformation of his writing and some of his insights to Jonathan were what made me keep reading.

Sometimes Alex's letters weren't as successful--like Foer was using them as a Cliff Notes of sorts, telling the reader what the author may or may not have been trying to accomplish, or even admitting when it was ok to be confused because Alex was confused, too--but ultimately, these letters were my favorite parts of the book. You got great insight into Jonathan, too, a most "premium person" and his unusual habits: his fear of dogs, his vegetarianism, and his anxiety.

4) When you view the novel as a whole, it's easier to tolerate--and even appreciate--some of Foer's devices. In my mind, the book is an homage to Foer's grandfather. When Alex and Jonathan learn truths about their respective grandfathers and then bicker about which version of the truth to tell (yep, there's some real Life of Pi shit going on in here), I saw the devices and structure as Foer--at the time, a first-time author--exploring the best way to write about his grandfather, and making those struggles a part of the novel. (Kind of like Charlie Kaufman trying to figure out how to adapt The Orchid Thief, and writing Adaptation instead.)

...did Foer even go to the Ukraine? I didn't look it up (yet). Was he inspired by real events experienced by his grandfather? I'm not sure, but it's what I'd like to think after reading this novel, and one of the reasons I was won over in the end. It's a story that will stay with me. A challenging read, both in subject matter and in structure... a bit of a mindfuck if I'm laying it all out there, but still very worthwhile.

n   “Soy una buena persona que vivió una mala época” n

Como esos títulos que tienen forma de ola o de montaña rusa en los capítulos de una de las partes que de forma alternativa se van sucediendo a lo largo de todo el relato, así fue mi experiencia con la novela: grandes subidas y suaves descensos, sin que ello signifique que, como en ese carro que se hunde en el río en el inicio del relato histórico del que van saliendo a la superficie objetos de muy diversa índole, no aparecieran en esos declives de vez en cuando párrafos maravillosos. El final, como en las etapas ciclistas de montaña, es en alto, aunque después haya un pequeño descenso hasta llegar a la meta.

n   “El fin del mundo ha llegado a menudo, y sigue llegando con la misma frecuencia.” n

La novela se inicia con mucha fuerza gracias a las divertidísimas reflexiones que Alex hace acerca de lo que fue su trabajo como traductor para Safran Foer en Ucrania mientras este se documentaba sobre sus ancestros judíos con el fin de escribir una novela, su primera novela, una preciosidad durante buena parte de la poética, dura, mágica y triste historia.

n   “Para Brod, la vida era la lenta constatación de que este mundo no estaba hecho para ella, y de que, por la razón que fuera, ella nunca podría ser feliz y sincera al mismo tiempo… Nada conseguía ser más de lo que era en realidad. Eran solo cosas, prisioneras de su propia esencia.” n

Como enlace entre ambas partes están las cartas, divertidas en un principio, muy amargas a medida que avanza la historia, que Alex escribe a Safran comentando los capítulos de la novela que este le va enviando, y que nosotros también leeremos, al mismo tiempo que discutía los comentarios que el novelista le hacía sobre el relato que Alex iba escribiendo acerca de sus días en Ucrania y que este le enviaba a su vez, también con una deriva desde lo divertido hacia lo doloroso. Cartas que, copiando su estilo y sus expresiones y hasta frases enteras, podría yo enviar a Safran para decirle:

Querido Jonathan.

Espero que estés feliz y que tu familia esté saludable y próspera.

Tragándome un trozo de orgullo, me siento forzado a proclamar primeramente que no soy nada primordial escribiendo cartas y que querer, como quiero, ser sincero y a la vez benévolo es bastante rígido.

Empezaré decorosamente refiriendo los rosados cosquilleos que sentí leyendo tu libro, lo embelesado que me he encontrado con muchas de las contingencias de tu familia que a mucha gente le irá bien saber. Toda la pandilla me ha parecido primordial, el héroe, o sea, tú, Alex, el machete, el torpe Pequeño Igor, el abuelo, que me gustaría imaginármelo ahora exhalando zetas, y, aunque a ti no te electrifique mucho, también el perrito Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior, ¡qué gracia bosquejarlo socializando con tu pierna! De padre mejor no digo nada, ni de madre tampoco. Estoy siendo cautelar

Hay otros momentos en la parte céntrica del libro que no he disfrutado tanto, conjeturo que pudo ser porque eran muy judías. No atesoro peros en contra de los judíos, aunque no pueda perdonaros vuestro proceder como país en la actualidad ni comprender vuestra pasiva instalación en aquellos acaecidos tiempos.

“De manera que no se hizo nada. No se tomó decisión alguna. No se preparó ninguna maleta, ni se vaciaron las casas. No se construyeron trincheras ni se blindaron edificios. Nada. Esperaron como tontos, sentados como tontos, hablando, como tontos…”

Pese a todo, te reiteralizo lo de los rosados cosquilleos y mis muchos embelesos. Si tu diana era hacer algo de lo que no avergonzarte, puedes conformarte mucho.

Y ya, no teniendo ningún otro apunte luminoso que darte, me despido, que sé que mi forma de articular termina fastidiando un poquito y quizás fue algo de lo que tú dispensaste cantidubi en la novela. Lo que no roba que poseas razón al pensar que “el humorístico es el único modo sincero de contar una historia triste”, aunque tampoco puedo disputarte que también, mano a mano, “el humor no es más que una forma de escabullirse de este mundo maravilloso y terrible”.

Bueno, que espero que mis palabras no te hayan parecido insignificantes o carentes de adecuación, nada me hastiaría más que haberte puesto aburrido. Solo puedo instruirte de que he colocado mi mejor talento y me he esforzado al máximo, que es lo máximo que puedo esforzarme.

Con todo mi candor.

Guille.

Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated (Dutton, 2002)

My, what a clever novel!

In any case, that, I imagine, is what Jonathan Safran Foer kept saying as he was writing this. And really, much about it is clever. The comparisons to A Clockwork Orange are completely unwarranted, as Alex, Foer's Ukrainian hero, destroys the English language in a quite different way than does Burgess' Alex. (A less politically correct but more conceptually accurate comparison would be Charlie Chan, as written by Earl Derr Biggers.) Foer's intertwining of stories is also quite clever, and his use of the two narrators to tell the main storylines.

However, with all the cleverness going on, Foer seems to have forgotten in many places to actually insert a novel. Threads pick up in odd places and then die with no fanfare, never to be resurrected again; the story has holes without being told an enough of an impressionist way to allow the reader to fill in enough blanks; the characters are obviously there as vehicles to carry off the cleverness, instead of being fully-realized human beings. In other words, this is a linguistic roller coaster, not a novel.

Not to say Foer doesn't write well when he forgets about the tricks and applies himself. Especially in the novel's last eighty pages, there are scenes of great beauty and tragedy that are conveyed in powerful manner that make the reader sit up and take notice. (The emotionl impact of every last one of them is dramatically undercut by Foer's following each with a needlessly scatological and/or pornographic piece of attempted humor, each of which fails because of its positioning, but the tragic pieces themselves are extremely well-written.) Unfortunately, these scenes are all too few. One of them is going along swimmingly until he decides to interject a Rick Moody-esque three-page unpunctuated sentence. Horrid. (And a trick he repeats a couple of times afterwards, also throwing in run-on words. Even more horrid.)

The book is billed as a comedy, and Foer tries to carry it off as such, but when the finest-written scenes are those of tragedy, it's hard to call it a success as attempted. Foer has the makings of a fine dramatic writer, once he gets away from being so consciously clever. **

I have previously read and liked a book by this author, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. So, I decided to try another. It did not go well.

There are two stories here. One involves the main character, Jonathan Safran Foer (yes, the same as the author), in the 1990s, searching for information about his family’s history, accompanied by Alex (a Ukrainian translator), Alex’s grandfather, and his grandfather’s dog. Jonathan wants to visit the village where his grandfather lived and hopes to find the woman who saved his grandfather’s life during WWII. The second story is being written by Jonathan about his ancestors. He is creating it around a box of mementos given to him by a woman of the village. It jumps around in time from 1791 to 1942.

I strongly disliked this book. The plot is unfocused and disjointed. It feels unfinished and actually ends in the middle of a sentence. The title must be ironic. I assume the illumination is of the people who pointed out Jews to the Nazis during WWII, but usually illumination is positive, so it is a bit confusing. A large portion is narrated by Alex, the Ukrainian translator, whose English is not fluent. I think this device is supposed to be humorous, but I found it annoying. Alex employs the wrong words in expressing himself and his grammar is atrocious.

I was tempted not to finish, but it is short. If you like direct storytelling, avoid this book. On a positive note, it is an uncommon take on WWII fiction. I believe it will appeal to those that enjoy experimental fiction.

Zoveelste herlees september 2024: nog steeds fantastisch.

One of my best reads of this year so far! Straight into my goodreads favourites!

- This novel follows the story of Jonathan, a young man who is visiting Ukraine in the hopes of discovering the woman who saved his Grandfather from the Nazis fifty years before. On arriving in Ukraine Jonathan meets his translator, Alex who will be aiding him with his search. Along with Alex is Alex's Grandfather and his dog, Sammy David Jr, Jr. Their mission takes them around Ukraine and they slowly begin to unearth things relating to Jonathan's family.

- The format of this book is something that I really loved but also something that I have seen criticised. There are chapters which follow Jonathan and Alex in the present time, each one of them telling the story from their point of view (I have to say that I found Alex's jumbled English to be hilarious), but there are also chapters that go back in time to Jonathan's Grandfather and what actually happened to him. This intertwining of present day and the building story of Jonathan's ancestors was beautifully done and I'm eager to read something similar in the future!

- Overall I found the comedic nature of Alex mixed with the more solemn and dark undertones of the novel to be wonderfully written by Foer, I was pulled in and emotionally battered by the end!

- Hilarious, beautiful and heart-breaking. This is definitely a novel I will be rereading in years to come, 5 out of 5 stars from me!

'Everything is Illuminated' is prize-winning Literary Fiction, which means the reader watches the characters endure the revelations of an 'Examined life' like the way one does the peeling of an onion. There are tears after true family history is finally told, and romanticizing the past can no longer be sustained. Still, history and family matter, maybe more so after searing, fully-revealed Truths makes the previous toleration of evil behavior impossible.

Many young people find themselves mysteriously mired down or stuck in emotional quicksand by ancient family issues. Obfuscation, misdirection and silence are often helpful to daily survival, but not for moving on. Moral: personal problems may actually be generational.

I, for one, vote for truth, no matter how painful.

Three stories are narrated in the book, each of varying degrees of fact, imagination and clarity, each with a beginning, middle and end, yet each is circular and eternal to human experience. Marriage, birth, coming-of-age, death - all the parts of a family's myth which in being passed down becomes a romantic fable of palatable continuity - until the real past is told. Myths create nations, as well as families, and hidden history. We almost never see the one-off mirroring of images, either, probably because we mistake the reflected image for someone else.....

A Jewish-American man, the author/character Jonathan, or 'hero', hires a local Ukrainian travel agent and Gentile translator, Sasha, and a driver, Sasha's Grandfather, in 1997, to help him find the small Ukrainian village where Jonathan's grandfather was born. Jonathan is writing a fictionalized story based on his research and family myths about how the small village of Trachimbrod was established in 1791, and along the way, learning about his grandfather's life before the tragedies caused by the Nazi genocide of Ukrainian Jews in 1941. The Safron family can trace the beginning of their family back to 1791, so Jonathan's fictional story, told in alternating chapters, is an imagined version of what happened in 1791, based on his grandmother's tales and actual research. However, while Jonathan Safran confirms details of the few things he had known about his Jewish grandfather and his great-great-great-great-great-great-great ancestors, the search for a woman in Jonathan's grandfather's photograph from 1941 brings unexpected family revelations for the somewhat playful and adolescent Sasha.

Sasha writes and speaks in an incredibly fractured comical English in alternating chapters which becomes surprisingly apt in the often incomprehensible process of transmitting information between speakers of different languages. Jonathan has encouraged Sasha to speak and write letters in English, asking him to make a story of his family and Jonathan's visit. Sasha does so because he hopes to visit America when he has saved enough money, but in the process of writing, he grows up as he comes to terms with his own history and that of his family.

The writing to me seemed like almost post-modern styling, but the book is saved completely from that sterile process of authorial wit by placing flashy word construction into the mouth of a young and exuberant Ukrainian speaking appealing, if fractured, English. The effect is comic, although tragedy eventually sobers everybody up, especially us, gentle reader.

Ah, the enduring Romance of tradition, continuity, family - until Truth sucks all the air out of the room.