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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).
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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.
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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.
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