Jonathan Safran Foer pulls out all the tricks he can muster in an attempt to breathe dimensionality into his hollow narrative. Each character is laden with an overabundant cargo of quirky quirks, and speaks in funny little idiosyncratic phrases. This laundry list of idiosyncrasies is substituted for actual characterisation; the cute little adventures and diversions are substituted for any meaningful narrative content.

Everyone in this novel is so damn cute and quirky. Everything is so damn contrived. Contrast this with what I just wrote about sincerity in my review of A Naked Singularity. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close represents the opposite end of the spectrum: the absence of sincerity, and a complete dependence on gimmickry and contrivance. Yet it undertakes to explore themes that should be treated seriously, certainly not in such a flippant, borderline exploitative manner.

I will say that there were times that I felt a genuine emotional response to the subject matter, in which characters grapple with profound, personal loss. But these occasions felt calculated, the emotional response plied intentionally out of me, rather than being achieved through the natural elicitation of any kind of genuine empathy. These episodes were usually followed by some form of mild shame on my part, for having been so transparently manipulated, and for having actively participated in the swindle.

I realise that this review is unfair. To be completely honest, the book isn’t even that bad. In fact, it’s really quite clever. I would even say that it’s thoughtful, creative, polished, and well-crafted, for the kind of thing that it is. But there is no truth here, no heart, no honesty, and no sincerity. And clever though they may be, why read someone’s words, if they’re not sincere?

Wenn man selbst schon Menschen verloren hat, die einem sehr nahe standen, dann weiß man, was für ein Trauer-Typ ist. Eher still oder laut, alleine oder unter Menschen, klagend oder deprimiert. Die wenigsten von uns werden aber in ihrer Trauer extrem laut sein und versuchen, unheimliche nahe bei Menschen zu sein. Ich bin auf jeden Fall nicht so ein Typ im Gegensatz zum Protagonisten des Buchs. Oskar ist mit seinen 11 Jahren so ein Junge, der wie ein Borderliner seine Trauer auslebt, nachdem sein geliebter Vater im WTC bei 9/11 umkam. Oft liegt er unter seinem Bett und verkriecht sich vor der Welt. Doch dann findet er eine Aufgabe, die er mit großer Akribie nachgeht. Er findet einen unbekannten Schlüssel im Schrank seinen Vaters im Umschlag, auf dem der Name Black steht. Jetzt muss er die über 400 Blacks in New York abklappern, um das Rätsel zu lösen, das ihm sein Vater hinterlassen haben könnte. Die Nadel im Heuhaufen. Und so wird aus dem Jungen mit der Tendenz zum Asperger ein Sucher und Kämpfer, während seine Mutter und seine Oma eher die stillen Trauernden sind.

Die Geschichte wirkt sehr konstruiert, fast schon so unglaublich wie ein Märchen vom Jungen mit dem Schlüssel. Oskars Erzählungen und Rückblicke werden immer wieder von Berichten der Großmutter und anderen Briefen von fremdem Menschen unterbrochen, die in Kriegszeiten Traumata erlebten. Ich hatte etwas Probleme, in die Geschichte hineinzufinden. Zudem ist sie sprachlich sehr einfach erzählt und äußerst amerikanisch in den vielen Redewendungen. What the..? Aber die Konstruktion ist erstaunlich geschickt und so wird auf ganz leichte Art und Weise klar, wie unterschiedlich die Menschen mit Verlust umgehen. Oskar kann sehr anstrengend und verletzend sein, aber am Ende will man den Kleinen einfach nur in den Arm nehmen und ihm wünschen, dass er sein Vater zwar nie vergisst, aber auch Frieden mit dem schlimmsten Tag und seinen verbliebenen Angehörigen findet. Das Buch hat mich am Ende tief berührt, es man sich lange noch beschäftigt und es mich gut unterhalten. Was kann man von Literatur mehr erwarten. Es ist ein ganz besonderes Buch, bei dem sprachliche Finessen keine Rolle spielen. Also Kopf ausgeschaltet und vom ganzen Herzen 5 Sterne.

I hate to keep pointing out to everyone that I listened to the audio version of this or that book, as it gets repetitive after awhile, and for the most part, it is usually irrelevant. In this case, though, it seems to have made a difference.

When I finished Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, I went online to read some reviews. I was surprised by what I read. It seemed that just about everyone who gave their opinion on this book, whether positive or negative, commented on Foer's "experimental" writing style. Apparently, Foer would at times not use proper punctuation, or would clump words on top of each other so that they appeared to look like scribbles, or would insert photographs, or even leave several pages blank. I hate to look like I'm trying to be cute by using the phrase which appeared so often in the book, but my reaction to this was exactly that: What the.... ?

There is no evidence of any of these experimental writing tactics in the audio version whatsoever. I mean, there is mention of a memoir having nothing but blank pages, but that is part of the story itself... there was no sense of actual blank pages within Foer's book. There was no sense of words piling up on each other, either. And, clearly, there were no pictures.

I'm not sure how I would have felt about the book with all of the above thrown in. Some seemed to have found it distracting, and perhaps I'd have felt the same. Without them, though, you are left with nothing but the story itself, pure and uncluttered, and which I found to be beautifully written.

The narration by the various actors was also superbly done. Sometimes I get annoyed by the fact that my current situation limits me to audiobooks, as I miss having a real book in my hand and reading the words on a page in my own voice with my own interpretation. And then I come across a book like this one, and I am glad. Some books, it seems, are even better read aloud.

6 Estrelas

Incrivelmente Interessante e Extremamente Lacrimejante


Thomas Horn (Oskar Schell) no filme de Stephen Daldry, com Tom Hanks e Sandra Bullock


Update 3

WARNING - Alguns "pequenos" spoilers

3 – Incrivelmente Comovente

O Único Animal

Oskar tem uma missão. ”Era mais ou menos assim que me sentia quando decidi conhecer toda a gente de Nova Iorque com o apelido Black.” (Pág. 115), na esperança de descobrir mais sobre a chave do pai.

Porque não estou onde tu estás – 21/5/63

Thomas Schell, Sr., o avô de Oskar escreve uma carta onde descreve o relacionamento com a sua esposa baseado em regras.

Aparecem as seguintes imagens:





2 - Extremamente Inventivo

Googolplex

Oskar, o joalheiro: ”Quanto à pulseira que a mãe levou ao funeral, o que fiz foi converter a última mensagem de voz do pai em código Morse; usei contas azul-celeste para o silêncio, contas castanho-avermelhadas para as pausas entre as letras, contas violeta para as pausas entre as palavras e pedaços de fio curtos e compridos para os bipes curtos e compridos, que, na realidade, se chamam blipes, acho eu, ou uma coisa assim. O pai teria sabido. Levou-me nove horas a fazer, (…)” (Pág. 52)
Oskar encontra um pequeno envelope com uma chave mais grossa e mais curta do que o normal. Mais tarde, descobre que no envelope está escrito a palavra “Black” – e inicia uma investigação… e descobre num bloco de um expositor para canetas uma folha que arranca:



O Que Eu Sinto

A sua avó (nunca é referido o seu nome) está no aeroporto e escreve uma carta a Oskar ”Tenho tantas coisas para te dizer! Quero começar pelo princípio, pois é o que tu mereces. Quero contar-te tudo, sem omitir um único pormenor. Mas onde é o princípio?”. (Os espaços entre as frases são maiores do que o normal.).


1 - Incrivelmente Triste

Mas Que?

Oskar é o narrador – tem nove anos de idade -, o pai Thomas Schell, Jr. morreu -, ele é um inventor, tocador de tamborim; e se uma chaleira com a água a ferver “lesse com a voz do pai, até eu adormecer, ou talvez um conjunto de chaleiras que cantassem o coro do “Yellow Submarine”", dos Beatles. É um miúdo que está a sofrer e pode ter autismo ou Síndrome de Asperger (não sei bem se, efectivamente, tem).

Porque Não Estou Onde Tu Estás - 21/5/63

Thomas Schell, Sr., o avô de Oskar escreve uma carta após abandonar a sua esposa e o filho por nascer – relatando partes da sua vida que antecederam esse evento. A saída de Dresden, na Alemanha para a América; descobre que está a perder a voz e por isso escreve nas suas mãos a palavra “sim” e “não”; comunica através do que escreve num caderno…
O capítulo termina com a seguinte imagem:





Foda-se!

Este livro acaba de inaugurar uma nova shelve…



Tenho dúvida no título. Aceitam-se sugestões!

1 - Melhor do que dar uma!;

2 - Vai ver se está a chover;

3 - Melhor do que foder;

4 -

Vai dar banho ao cão;

n
5 - Melhor do que dar uma ponteirada;

6 - Acreditas em amor à primeira vista, ou tenho que passar por aqui mais uma vez?;

7 - Melhor do que dar uma caimbrada;

8 -

Aceitam-se mais sugestões.

n

When Thomas Pynchon invented what James Wood later named “hyper realism”, he did literature no favors. To read Pynchon is to witness genius at its most joyless. A mind capable of inventing myriad things and compelled to record them all. But at least Pynchon showed genius.

What Jonathan Safran Foer shows, however, is mere gimmickry. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close takes readers who thought they might have seen a glimmer of greatness in Everything is Illuminated and convinces them all they really saw were special effects.

It’s very difficult to read Foer’s second novel without reflecting on his first. Everything is Illuminated began in such an original way that a reader forgave the 150 or so dull pages of less-than-compelling writing that came along throughout the rest of the book. The reader forgave the puerile reflections on the Holocaust and the manufactured confession of homosexuality. Because the book began so originally.

But Foer is a one-trick pony. In Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, he’s once more co-opted a mass tragedy and made a fruit salad of it with various voices and narrative tricks. Oh sure, the book has an underlying tone of sadness – sadness, not seriousness – because, clever as he wants to be, Foer didn’t dare go wholehog with a tragedy still as fresh as 9/11. But that’s about the only restriction he put on his vanity.

To indulge himself with a hundred irritating digressions and quips, Foer invented a child narrator. This has become more and more common among the hyper-realism set in the last 10 years. Raised by guidance counselors who told them to never stop being childish, these novelists give us hundreds of pages of “exploring their inner child” – all under the guise of serious artistic endeavor.

But this is not serious art. This is an author who makes the easy choice every time. When he thinks he has something profound to say, he doesn’t hesitate to have his nine-year-old narrator couch things in college-level language. The rest of the time, when he feels like writing about whichever page of the encyclopedia he happened to turn to that morning, he has the little professor wander off wherever he wishes, always with a literary safety net that says, “I’m trying to depict the world through a child’s eyes!”

But we should ask ourselves why a novelist feels compelled to depict a mass tragedy through a child’s eyes. After all, this isn’t biography; Foer could have depicted the tragedy through anyone’s eyes at all. Better put, when he sat down to write about the savagery of Napoleon’s 1812 battle with Russia, why didn’t Leo Tolstoy depict the burning of Moscow through the eyes of a nine-year-old and his nutty and mute grandfather? Probably because a nine-year-old would have limited Tolstoy’s vocabulary too drastically; a nine-year-old doesn’t know enough to say anything original about war.

Tolstoy, in other words, was too concerned about making an original commentary to worry about being a “fresh new voice!” in the contemporary fiction scene. Tolstoy took a large subject and made it larger. Foer takes a large subject and makes it tiny.

But sometimes, I’ve learned, large things must be tiny. That’s how Foer’s narrator would say it. And he’d be wrong, of course. But then, that’s why we don’t publish books written by nine-year-olds.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a frustating, at times infuriating, book by a very talented writer who mostly takes the low road by wringing cheap sentiment from the tragedy of 9/11.

The story of Oskar's odyssey to find the lock that fits the key he finds in his dad's closet is unbelievable and maudlin, and as a character he is unrealistic and annoying. He is wise and empathic way beyond the capacity of any nine-year-old. He's often smarter and more emotionally mature than the adults, but when the author doesn't want him to, he doesn't see the obvious. Adults in a cartoonish New York receive him like it's Halloween and he's a cute trick or treater.

The author can write beautifully, and he's at his best in the sections not told by the child, those written by his grandparents. Because of those sections I don't regret reading the book. They are at times brilliant, startling, honest and genuinely moving.

But the bulk of this book is cheaply sentimental and worse. I won't spoil it but something that happens at the end is cringeworthy. Even in the context of a totally unrealistic plot this scene stands out for its cartoonish qualities and bad taste.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is mostly a maudlin mashup of unrealistic elements. It deals with other tragedies seriously, but mines the events of 9/11 for cheap sentimentality.

What can I really say about this book? It's one of the most special books to me. Reviews are never objective, but it's extra difficult for me to even try to be an objective reviewer with this one because it just means so much to me. It was one of the first books I ever read as a young adult that got me into reading back in 2012. I fell in love with how this book made me think and feel about life and love and all the big things out there. And revisiting it now at 30 years old I feel exactly the same towards it which is so unique and special. I can't say much else but here are some of my favorite quotes to show you why I love it so much.

-"My life story is the story of everyone I've ever met."

-"...it was one of the best days of my life, a day during which I lived my life and didn't think about my life at all."

-"I like to see people reunited, maybe that's a silly thing, but what can I say, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can't tell fast enough, the ears that aren't big enough, the eyes that can't take in all of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone."

-"I couldn't explain my need to myself, and that's why it was such a beautiful need, there's nothing wrong with not understanding yourself."

-"So many people enter and leave your life! Hundreds of thousands of people! You have to keep the door open so they can come in! But it also means you have to let them go!"

-"Time was passing like a hand waving from a train that I wanted to be on."

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.

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

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.

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.

Dear Kim,
Thank you for making me read this, you book-pushing, carney-loving, skee ball fiend. You were right. I wish you lighter boots*, always.

Dear Everyone Else,
Let’s get this out of the way first: There are pictures. They’re intended to be clever and, at times, to clutch at your heart. It’s gimmicky. I don’t care.

Granted, I read this at a time when I may have been more vulnerable to schmaltz. My mother had recently passed away. I was on a journey, searching for the parts of her life that had been lost to me, filling in the blank pages of our relationship. Like Oskar, Jonathan Safran Foer’s nine-year old protagonist, searching the city for the lock to fit his father’s key. His father was lost on September 11th. I say lost because that’s what he was. Lost. Gone, missing, not found. Oskar is trying to make sense of his loss and, in the process, other things are found. The book is made up of letters from an absent father to the son he never knew, letters from a grandmother achingly desperate to be something to someone, and at the center is Oskar’s story. I mentioned his quest for the lock to fit his father’s key. Systematically, scientifically, he works to make his father’s key significant. He needs his father to have been something to someone. Necessary.

While it irks me an entire page has been wasted on a picture of a tennis player, it also makes a very clear point to me: Words are important. A picture is not worth a thousand words. Not that picture, anyway. We need the exchange of words with one another; communication. Loquaciousness, even. We need to hear them, read them, write them on our skin, speak them with our mouths, our hands, our eyes, our mouths again. We need the words.

Why didn’t he say goodbye?
I gave myself a bruise.
Why didn’t he say “I love you”?

…you didn’t sound like someone who was about to die, I wish we could have sat across a table and talked about nothing for hours, I wish we could have wasted time, I want an infinitely blank book and the rest of time…

Foer has a message I can’t afford to ignore. When someone is something to you, tell them. Tell them how your life is better because of them. Tell them how you are better with them. Tell them you love them.

There was never a right time to say it.
It was always unnecessary.
The books in my father’s shed were sighing.
The sheets were rising and falling around me with Anna’s breathing.
I thought about waking her.
But it was unnecessary.
There would be other nights.
And how can you say I love you to someone you love?
I rolled onto my side and fell asleep next to her.
Here is the point of everything I have been trying to tell you, Oskar.
It’s always necessary.

It's always necessary.




*Read the book and you'll know what we're talking about. Maybe.