Jonathan Safran Foer
Author of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
About the Author
Jonathan Safran Foer (born 1977) is an American author best known for his novels Everything Is Illuminated (2002) and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005). He was born in Washington, D.C. and attended Georgetown Day School and Princeton University. In 2000, Foer was awarded the Zoetrope: show more All-Story Fiction Prize and in 2007 he was included in Granta's Best of Young American Novelists. His forthcoming nonfiction book is entitled, Eating Animals. His title Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close made The N.Y. Times Best Seller List for 2012. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Photographed at BookPeople in Austin, Texas by Frank Arnold
Works by Jonathan Safran Foer
A Convergence of Birds: Original Fiction and Poetry Inspired by Joseph Cornell (2001) — Editor — 208 copies, 2 reviews
The Sixth Borough 5 copies
Escape from Children’s Hospital 3 copies
If This Is Kosher 2 copies
Tìm bố ở New York 1 copy
Iartă-mă 1 copy
il Tabù di essere ebrei: perchè il nuovo antisemtismo sta distruggendo l'ordine liberale mondiale 1 copy
Love Is Blind and Deaf 1 copy
Está Tudo Iluminado 1 copy
Rhoda 1 copy
לאכול בעלי חיים 1 copy
Associated Works
The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories (1934) — Foreword, some editions — 748 copies, 10 reviews
Noisy Outlaws, Unfriendly Blobs, and Some Other Things . . .: That Aren't as Scary, Maybe, Depending on How You Feel Abo (2005) — Contributor — 695 copies, 13 reviews
The Heavens Are Empty: Discovering the Lost Town of Trochenbrod (2010) — Foreword, some editions — 112 copies, 6 reviews
Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, "Found" Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts (2012) — Contributor — 84 copies, 4 reviews
Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2003) — Contributor — 84 copies, 1 review
Mentors, Muses & Monsters: 30 Writers on the People Who Changed Their Lives (2009) — Contributor — 71 copies, 2 reviews
Practically Vegan: More Than 100 Easy, Delicious Vegan Dinners on a Budget: A Cookbook (2022) — Foreword — 36 copies, 4 reviews
Selected Shorts: A Touch of Magic (Selected Shorts: A Celebration of the Short Story) (2009) — Contributor — 25 copies, 4 reviews
The New Diaspora: The Changing Landscape of American Jewish Fiction (2015) — Contributor — 17 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1977-02-21
- Gender
- male
- Education
- Princeton University (AB|1999)
- Occupations
- novelist
short story writer
professor - Organizations
- Paris Review
Conjunctions
The New York Times
The New Yorker
New York University - Awards and honors
- Freshman, Sophomore, Junior, and Senior Creative Writing Thesis Prizes (Princeton)
Zoetrope: All-Story Fiction Prize (2000)
Granta's Best Of Young American Novelists (2007)
Bronfman Youth Fellowships in Israel Fellowship (study in Israel) - Relationships
- Krauss, Nicole (ex spouse)
Foer, Joshua (brother)
Foer, Franklin (brother)
Foer, Esther Safran (Mother) - Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Washington, D.C., USA
- Places of residence
- Washington, D.C., USA
Brooklyn, New York, USA
Princeton, New Jersey, USA - Associated Place (for map)
- USA
Members
Reviews
Best for: Anyone looking for both a philosophical and a reality-based discussion about the decision to consume meat.
In a nutshell: When he realizes he is going to be a father, Mr. Foer decides to examine the food he eats and the morality of it.
Worth quoting:
I underlined and starred so many lines that I could put here, but I think this one sums the entire question up for
“Whether we’re talking about fish species, pigs, or some other eaten animal, is such suffering the most important thing show more in the world? Obviously not. But that’s not the question. Is it more important than sushi, bacon, or chicken nuggets? That’s the question.”
Why I chose it:
I’ve been vegetarian (and even vegan) at a few points in my life. I pretty much never cook meat at home. Lately I’ve been wondering if I can justify my decision to even intermittently eat meat, so when I saw this book at Shakespeare and Co in Paris, I decided it was time to jump in again.
Review:
What does it mean to choose to consume meat in the US (or UK) these days? What has it meant for the last 50 years? Realistically, unless you are raising your own meat or purchasing it from one of an infinitesimally small number of family farmers, your meat is coming from a factory farm. And even if you do purchase it from a ‘humane’ farmer, that animal is still being killed in an unimaginably cruel slaughterhouse. We know this, and yet we (unless the person reading this is vegetarian or vegan) still consume meat. And eggs. And dairy.
Why? This book explores the reasons we give, in beautifully written prose. Seriously, I’ve read many a book in my day about vegetarianism and veganism, but none have affected me in this way. They all have some variation on the same statistics, the same horror stories. The same glimpses into slaughterhouses, the same reminder that the workers in these facilities are often paid poorly and treated horribly. They tell us how pigs are much more like dogs than we’d probably feel comfortable knowing as we bite into our BLTs. How fish are much more intelligent than we’d probably imagined, and how both farmed and wild-caught seafood are just utterly horrible for the environment. How ALL of this factory farming — on land and sea — is destroy our world.
The book doesn’t provide an easy out, and I love that. Mr. Foer opens and closes his book with anecdotes about family meals. He describes the best (and only) meal his grandmother — a holocaust survivor — makes: chicken with carrots. He recognizes, and explores deeply, how food matters to us all culturally. How so many of our memories involve meals. And he asks if that is enough to justify consuming meat? What about if we are 100% certain that the meat was raised humanely (which is nearly impossibly to do)?
I’ve gone back and forth on this. I’ve read many an article about how pushing a vegetarian — or vegan — life on everyone can be culturally and economically insensitive. When vegetarians and vegans point out how poorly factory farm (e.g. all farm) animals are treated, they’re often responded to with the fact that people who pick our fruits and vegetables are treated poorly, so why don’t we care about them. Which is a completely insincere comment, given the shit labor standards that cover slaughterhouse workers.
Here’s where I’ve landed, once again, and after reading this book: I cannot justify consuming meat. Me. A woman with no medical issues, who has access to sufficient money and time to prepare an all-vegetarian diet. I do care about the welfare of animals. And I do care about their rights. I care about the environment. I care about public health (side note: Mr. Foer’s section on antibiotics and flu pandemics is one area that other similar books don’t cover nearly enough). And by choosing to not eat meat, I can be closer to living my values. I just had become complacent, and this book helped push me back on the right path.
As I write this review, my cat Tigger keeps jumping in my lap. My partner and I adopted him and his brother Jameson 6 1/2 years ago. They’re our buddies, our friends. We love them dearly, and even brought them with us when we moved to London. I can’t imagine life without them, and I certainly can’t imagine eating them. So how can I justify eating their animal friends? And why do I keep trying to? Because burgers are tasty? Sure. But, as Mr. Foer asks, is that taste more important than the life of another animal? Of course, this raises the question of how to feed them humanely. Cats are obligate carnivores, so chances are that the meat I need to feed them was procured in an inhumane fashion. I don’t know how to square that circle, but I’m going to try. show less
In a nutshell: When he realizes he is going to be a father, Mr. Foer decides to examine the food he eats and the morality of it.
Worth quoting:
I underlined and starred so many lines that I could put here, but I think this one sums the entire question up for
“Whether we’re talking about fish species, pigs, or some other eaten animal, is such suffering the most important thing show more in the world? Obviously not. But that’s not the question. Is it more important than sushi, bacon, or chicken nuggets? That’s the question.”
Why I chose it:
I’ve been vegetarian (and even vegan) at a few points in my life. I pretty much never cook meat at home. Lately I’ve been wondering if I can justify my decision to even intermittently eat meat, so when I saw this book at Shakespeare and Co in Paris, I decided it was time to jump in again.
Review:
What does it mean to choose to consume meat in the US (or UK) these days? What has it meant for the last 50 years? Realistically, unless you are raising your own meat or purchasing it from one of an infinitesimally small number of family farmers, your meat is coming from a factory farm. And even if you do purchase it from a ‘humane’ farmer, that animal is still being killed in an unimaginably cruel slaughterhouse. We know this, and yet we (unless the person reading this is vegetarian or vegan) still consume meat. And eggs. And dairy.
Why? This book explores the reasons we give, in beautifully written prose. Seriously, I’ve read many a book in my day about vegetarianism and veganism, but none have affected me in this way. They all have some variation on the same statistics, the same horror stories. The same glimpses into slaughterhouses, the same reminder that the workers in these facilities are often paid poorly and treated horribly. They tell us how pigs are much more like dogs than we’d probably feel comfortable knowing as we bite into our BLTs. How fish are much more intelligent than we’d probably imagined, and how both farmed and wild-caught seafood are just utterly horrible for the environment. How ALL of this factory farming — on land and sea — is destroy our world.
The book doesn’t provide an easy out, and I love that. Mr. Foer opens and closes his book with anecdotes about family meals. He describes the best (and only) meal his grandmother — a holocaust survivor — makes: chicken with carrots. He recognizes, and explores deeply, how food matters to us all culturally. How so many of our memories involve meals. And he asks if that is enough to justify consuming meat? What about if we are 100% certain that the meat was raised humanely (which is nearly impossibly to do)?
I’ve gone back and forth on this. I’ve read many an article about how pushing a vegetarian — or vegan — life on everyone can be culturally and economically insensitive. When vegetarians and vegans point out how poorly factory farm (e.g. all farm) animals are treated, they’re often responded to with the fact that people who pick our fruits and vegetables are treated poorly, so why don’t we care about them. Which is a completely insincere comment, given the shit labor standards that cover slaughterhouse workers.
Here’s where I’ve landed, once again, and after reading this book: I cannot justify consuming meat. Me. A woman with no medical issues, who has access to sufficient money and time to prepare an all-vegetarian diet. I do care about the welfare of animals. And I do care about their rights. I care about the environment. I care about public health (side note: Mr. Foer’s section on antibiotics and flu pandemics is one area that other similar books don’t cover nearly enough). And by choosing to not eat meat, I can be closer to living my values. I just had become complacent, and this book helped push me back on the right path.
As I write this review, my cat Tigger keeps jumping in my lap. My partner and I adopted him and his brother Jameson 6 1/2 years ago. They’re our buddies, our friends. We love them dearly, and even brought them with us when we moved to London. I can’t imagine life without them, and I certainly can’t imagine eating them. So how can I justify eating their animal friends? And why do I keep trying to? Because burgers are tasty? Sure. But, as Mr. Foer asks, is that taste more important than the life of another animal? Of course, this raises the question of how to feed them humanely. Cats are obligate carnivores, so chances are that the meat I need to feed them was procured in an inhumane fashion. I don’t know how to square that circle, but I’m going to try. show less
Should we eat animals? Jonathan Safran Foer asked himself the question and, beyond, questioned the meat and fishing industry when questioning how moral or not, healthy or not is what he would feed to his son. Bottom line: in Western societies overfed on factory farming and fisheries, is what we put into our mouth and feed our kids any good at all?
The health argument first: as he clearly remind by relying on the scientific literature, a vegetarian diet is -at the very least!- no better nor show more worse than a meat-including diet. Like a meat-including diet, in fact, a vegetarian diet will be healthy or not only insofar as you care or not about what you put in your mouth. It might seems like "duh!", but then again you see a lot of misinformation circulating around... Interestingly enough, though, he also notes (also relying on the scientific literature) that countries eating the most meat also are the ones the most impacted by all sorts of cardio-vascular diseases (on the rise when it comes to children), as are the ones consuming the most dairies being also the ones the most impacted by osteoporosis. Ti dum, di dum: could it be that the powerful lobbies selling us these products are (GASP!) lying to us to make profits? He doesn't go much into that line of reasoning. What concerns him the most is, mostly, the issue of animal cruelty. What about it?
Now, to anyone having bothered even a tiny bit to question where on earth our meat and fishes and dairies are coming from then there will be nothing quite new here. From the chicken industry to pigs farming, from the milk industry to cattle and the fishing industry, it's well-known (or should be well-known!) that the whole process is indeed from plain disgusting (no matter the wishy-washy about food safety) to downright cruel (we're talking about mass murdering animals in appalling conditions just so as to feed on their flesh, after all...) when not, above all, completely unnecessary (again: you don't need to eat animals to be healthy). But then so what?
What I really appreciated is the author's open-mindedness. Jonathan Safran Foer is not a fanatic animal right activist, and he is not self-righteous either. He perfectly admits that people have always eaten meat and probably always will too. What he does, then, is to try and draw a line between animal rights and animal welfare. He is, for instance, very open about family-run farms as opposed to factory farming, although he regrets how dwindling they are; even, how some of their methods are no better either when it comes to cruelty (e.g. the branding of cattle on ranches...). Is it a good thing?
Quite frankly, I don't share his open-mindedness. I had been a meat-eater for decades before becoming a vegetarian (I am now moving towards becoming vegan...) and so I, for one, find the arguments put-forth by so-called "conscious omnivores" to be hypocritical to say the least. If we really care about animals as beings deserving any sort of compassion, then murdering them is just plain unethical and shouldn't be. Full stop.
Now, you may disagree with me and that's perfectly fine. What you can't take away from the rest of this book, though, is that family-run farms are such a minority in our consumption market that they are next to irrelevant. What you can't take away either is the other arguments advanced by the author and pertaining from environmental issues to health. Most importantly, you can't take away the human right issues too since, as it currently is, we are wasting an astounding amount of land and crops just so as to feed our food-to-be; land and crops that could be better used to feed human populations in poor countries. Regardless of his stance, then, this book remains a must-read for anyone daring to think about what we put in our mouths. And so there goes: should we eat animals? No! Thank you. show less
The health argument first: as he clearly remind by relying on the scientific literature, a vegetarian diet is -at the very least!- no better nor show more worse than a meat-including diet. Like a meat-including diet, in fact, a vegetarian diet will be healthy or not only insofar as you care or not about what you put in your mouth. It might seems like "duh!", but then again you see a lot of misinformation circulating around... Interestingly enough, though, he also notes (also relying on the scientific literature) that countries eating the most meat also are the ones the most impacted by all sorts of cardio-vascular diseases (on the rise when it comes to children), as are the ones consuming the most dairies being also the ones the most impacted by osteoporosis. Ti dum, di dum: could it be that the powerful lobbies selling us these products are (GASP!) lying to us to make profits? He doesn't go much into that line of reasoning. What concerns him the most is, mostly, the issue of animal cruelty. What about it?
Now, to anyone having bothered even a tiny bit to question where on earth our meat and fishes and dairies are coming from then there will be nothing quite new here. From the chicken industry to pigs farming, from the milk industry to cattle and the fishing industry, it's well-known (or should be well-known!) that the whole process is indeed from plain disgusting (no matter the wishy-washy about food safety) to downright cruel (we're talking about mass murdering animals in appalling conditions just so as to feed on their flesh, after all...) when not, above all, completely unnecessary (again: you don't need to eat animals to be healthy). But then so what?
What I really appreciated is the author's open-mindedness. Jonathan Safran Foer is not a fanatic animal right activist, and he is not self-righteous either. He perfectly admits that people have always eaten meat and probably always will too. What he does, then, is to try and draw a line between animal rights and animal welfare. He is, for instance, very open about family-run farms as opposed to factory farming, although he regrets how dwindling they are; even, how some of their methods are no better either when it comes to cruelty (e.g. the branding of cattle on ranches...). Is it a good thing?
Quite frankly, I don't share his open-mindedness. I had been a meat-eater for decades before becoming a vegetarian (I am now moving towards becoming vegan...) and so I, for one, find the arguments put-forth by so-called "conscious omnivores" to be hypocritical to say the least. If we really care about animals as beings deserving any sort of compassion, then murdering them is just plain unethical and shouldn't be. Full stop.
Now, you may disagree with me and that's perfectly fine. What you can't take away from the rest of this book, though, is that family-run farms are such a minority in our consumption market that they are next to irrelevant. What you can't take away either is the other arguments advanced by the author and pertaining from environmental issues to health. Most importantly, you can't take away the human right issues too since, as it currently is, we are wasting an astounding amount of land and crops just so as to feed our food-to-be; land and crops that could be better used to feed human populations in poor countries. Regardless of his stance, then, this book remains a must-read for anyone daring to think about what we put in our mouths. And so there goes: should we eat animals? No! Thank you. show less
[cross-posted at my blog here][This latest attempt at reviewing took place on November 27th, 2011] Gosh, this is so hard. How do you review something as perfect as this? You have no idea how many times I have tried/re-written to make this review as perfect as it can be, and I hope that it is now. Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close is my most favorite book in all history of time, so I wanted to do it justice. Yes, it did break my heart, every moment of every day, into more pieces than my show more heart was made of, during the 3 days I was reading this heart-wrenching masterpiece. I love it so, so, so much that mere attempts at explaining just how much would be an insult to my true feelings, and that I have to own two copies, different editions, of this book. Let me warn you first, this review isn't going to tell you much about the story, in fact, it's going to tell you what this book means to me personally.I finished Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close on September 7th. And I mean thoroughly finished. I'd read it a lot of times before, but had never got to finish it (partly because I'd loved it so much that I hadn't wanted it to end for me). I started reading again on September 5th, and I finished two days later. I must’ve been reading for four hours on end that day, because I got home around 4 pm, and when I finished I looked at the clock and it was 10 minutes to 8 pm. I looked at it with dry tears on both of my cheeks. And I realized there were also teardrops on my knees. Thank God it wasn't on the precious book. And to be honest, it didn’t even feel like 4 hours at all. I didn’t even remember turning pages. Everything went by really fast, and I was absorbing everything. I can relate to a lot of plots and themes in the book. That’s why I loved it then in the first place. And once I finished reading it, I was sure I couldn't love it more. I love it as much as a reader can possibly love a book, and I adore Jonathan Safran Foer as much as it is possible for an aspiring writer to adore his/her idol. Extremely Loud is my number one favorite book ever, no doubt about that. I am completely convinced it's the best thing that has ever happened to my bookshelf. Overstatement? I don't think so. I'm going to tell you why. First off, although this book is told in the voices of three people, it is Oskar's story that relates so much to my life, to the point of choking me with memories and feelings. Extremely Loud revolves mainly around Oskar Schell, a child who's lost a father. I am also a child who lost a father. And there are a lot of other things that I don’t think normal people would understand unless they have lost someone, or say, a father, like Oskar and I both have. The feelings and thoughts inside Oskar's head that Foer wrote so heart-wrenchingly were like buckets of ice being thrown at me in the middle of the coldest winter days. I was like, Ouch, Yes!, or sobbing all the time. It brought back my old memories of my dad and I was so pained that I felt alive. How could a 9-year-old say things that I could only keep shut behind the wall of my heart? The answer is just because. There's blissful innocence in the voice of this amazing 9-year-old that unleashed the bitterness inside of me, that untangled the knotted feelings I kept hidden so well, unspoken. One obvious example would be how Oskar resents his mom for being happy. I resented my mom when she seemed happy, too, back then. I thought it was an act of insulting Dad's memory. And I'm sure Oskar feels the same when this dialogue happened:
"I miss Dad." "So do I." "Do you?" "Of course I do." "But do you really?" "How could you ask that?" "It's just that you don't act like you miss him very much." "What are you talking about?" "I think you know what I'm talking about." "I don't." "I hear you laughing." "You hear me laughing?" "In the living room. With Ron." "You think because I laugh every now and then I don't miss Dad?"She said, “I’m trying to find ways to be happy. Laughing makes me happy.” I said, “I’m not trying to find ways to be happy, and I won’t.” She said, “Well, you should.” “Why?” “Because Dad would want you to he happy.” “Dad would want me to remember him.”I don't know about any of you, but for me, this dialogue reached in and took out my heart, ripped it apart, threw it on the floor, and stomped, stomped, stomped on what was left of it. That slow, penetrating pain. I cried like there was no tomorrow, because this had also happened to my mom and me. When I read the voice mails part, I cried some more. This book murdered me. When Oskar talks about his dad, Thomas Schell junior, I felt like he was talking about mine too. Our dads were so much alike. They liked to go on about things, saying random, knowledgeable stuff. The difference is that mine wasn't German-American, and mine wasn’t in the World Trade Center that 9/11. When Oskar misses his dad, I missed mine so terribly. When Oskar cries, hell yes I cried my eyes out with him. (Well to be honest I cried most of the time). This book. It gets me. So, so, so much. It expresses things I don’t tell anyone. It expresses me. It expresses those of us who's lost a parent or someone so close and significant to our lives and wanted to embrace and hold on to what's left of their memories.For another thing, beauty emanates from every word that Foer wrote. The writing is gorgeous. His prose is poetic, and meaningful, and touching, and perfect. It made me fall in love even harder with this book, if that was even possible. There are always killer lines like this: Does it break my heart, of course, every moment of every day, into more pieces than my heart was made of, I never thought of myself as quiet, much less silent, I never thought about things at all, everything changed, the distance that wedged itself between me and my happiness wasn’t the world, it wasn’t the bombs and burning buildings, it was me, my thinking, the cancer of never letting go, is ignorance bliss, I don’t know, but it’s so painful to think, and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think, I’ve thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it.Or this: She wants to know if I love her, that’s all anyone wants from anyone else, not love itself but the knowledge that love is there, like new batteries in the flashlight in the emergency kit in the hall closet.Gosh. This is beauty. His writing hit my cardiac veins and arteries all at the same time, making it hard to not appreciate it and cry some more. Never before have I enjoyed someone's writing so immensely. It flows and flows and flows. I want to be able to write like that, to express my thoughts and feelings in words that truly capture them, the way Foer does in this very book. This is precisely why I idolize him so much. Lastly, I love that this book is about love and loss. I like love and loss in novels, because they break my heart. I love having my heart broken and wrenched and trampled on by books, because that just goes to show how amazing those books are. This book tortured my heart again and again in the most pleasurable ways possible. And I couldn't get enough. I always came back for more, re-reading, again and again and again. Oskar's story is about holding on to that loved one, even when he's gone, refusing to let go. Thomas Schell senior's letters are filled with the love for the son he has abandoned and never got to know, forever lost to him, telling Oskar's dad his life story of love and loss in the horrible time of WWII. And Oskar's grandmother --no name given-- writes her letters to her only grandson, the one she loves most dearly, telling her own sides of lost love and life loss, and always saying something like, I hope you never love anything as much as I love you. This book shows me many aspects of love, and how destructive loss can be, something I already know very well. Still, it's nice to see that other people get it too. One of the things I learned and will forever cherish is the fact that it is always necessary to tell someone you love them. Speak now. Don't be afraid. I've seen how things couldn't be undone, or done, when it's too late. Forget about the idea of perfect occasions, because it may never come when there's still time. We slept in the same bed.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…It is always necessary.I love you.I will never ask for a more perfect book, merely because I know there never was/is/will be another one for me. I’m running out of words. I don’t know what else to say. Only that this book means much more to me than anyone would understand. It breaks my heart over and over, in a good way. It's the one book I will always be glad to give my whole heart to, and get it shattered by, because I know it's well worth it. And I also have two copies of this book. I'm definitely going to try re-reading this book every May, in remembrance of my father. It's nice to curl up in bed and read a book that allows you to remember all the good things.Love, love, love. So much love for this one.[cross-posted at my blog here] show less
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is really two separate stories that only mesh together at the very end. One is the story of Oskar Schell, an eight-year-old struggling to make sense of his father’s death at the World Trade Center on September 11th. The second revolves around Oskar’s grandfather, who lost his first love in the Dresden bombings during World War II. Both deal with love, trauma, loss, and grief, and both are so filled with despair to make the reading of Jonathan Safran show more Foer’s second novel extremely uncomfortable and incredibly emotional.
The problem lies with the narrators themselves. Their stories are interesting, even mesmerizing. Unfortunately, Oskar is too precocious and a bit too condescending for someone his age, while Oskar’s grandfather is too rigid and remote to allow a reader to build those necessary emotional connections with either narrator. The idea of an eight-year-old wandering around all five boroughs of New York by himself, especially in this day and age of hyper-vigilance of children brought on by an increased fear of kidnapping, is too preposterous to consider remotely plausible. Even when he finally asks someone to keep him company on his search, Oskar’s searches do not mirror the close attention everyone paid to their loved ones in the aftermath of 9/11, even years its occurrence.
As for Oskar’s grandfather, his story is more convoluted than Oskar’s as the way it is told is less direct and less honest. What makes his narrative unenjoyable is his character itself, especially as a reader not only gets to build a mental image of him through his own words, they also get the benefits of Oskar’s grandmother’s impressions of her wayward husband. While he is trying to justify his actions to his unborn son, his words appear as excuses even while he is simultaneously attempting to overcome his own guilt. He is not lying to himself but he is not being 100 percent honest either. The result is that he comes across to readers as cold, incapable of loving anyone other than his dead first love, and unwilling to even attempt to change.
At the same time a reader is attempting to overcome his or her aversions to either narrator, the print version of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close contains pictures, drawings, and other images that are supposed to enhance a reader’s appreciation and understanding of the story. Instead, and perhaps this is the fault of the e-book rather than the print version, these images were more of a distraction, one that jolts a reader out of the story rather than augmenting it.
That being said, there is one scene near the end, complete with pictures, that negate everything previously stated about the novel. It is the one time in which Oskar loses his inadvertent condescension and is finally able to speak the painful truth. The images that follow are painful and palpably dredge up the terror and horror that everyone throughout the nation was feeling on September 11th, 2001. It is as unforgettable a scene that ever was written in a novel.
Unfortunately, one scene, no matter how powerful, cannot overcome an entire novel filled with idiosyncrasies and foibles. While it is a scene that will haunt a reader for a long time, if not forever, the rest of the novel is too convoluted and disjointed for meaningful enjoyment. The fault lies not with the stories themselves but rather with the narrators chosen to tell the stories and the lack of bridges between narrators. The narrator shifts are abrupt, unannounced and often without any indication of which narrator is now telling his or her story. It is up to a reader to not only keep track of each narrator but also to keep the individual threads of the story together until they finally combine. This places a lot of pressure and responsibility on the reader, especially for a novel about such an emotional topic.
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is a novel that people either seem to love or feel ambivalent about it. I fall into the latter category. The entire story felt a bit too gimmicky to feel authentic. As the mother of an eight-year-old, I cannot overcome the idea of letting a child that age roam around a city, let alone New York City, by himself. While I recognize that Oskar is struggling with his grief and the sheer terror of what happened that day, his voice is not one I find appealing. As for his grandfather, he just left me feeling sick to my stomach. Again, I understand the trauma and horror of what he experienced, but his actions produce their own kind of revulsion. The penultimate scene, wherein Oskar finally reveals his father’s last message, is appropriately shocking and disturbing enough to trouble me for a long time to come, but that does not override my discomfort of the entire novel. That being said, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is a novel that will generate a myriad of reactions in readers, all of which will be as personal and unique as one’s individual experiences and reactions on September 11th. show less
The problem lies with the narrators themselves. Their stories are interesting, even mesmerizing. Unfortunately, Oskar is too precocious and a bit too condescending for someone his age, while Oskar’s grandfather is too rigid and remote to allow a reader to build those necessary emotional connections with either narrator. The idea of an eight-year-old wandering around all five boroughs of New York by himself, especially in this day and age of hyper-vigilance of children brought on by an increased fear of kidnapping, is too preposterous to consider remotely plausible. Even when he finally asks someone to keep him company on his search, Oskar’s searches do not mirror the close attention everyone paid to their loved ones in the aftermath of 9/11, even years its occurrence.
As for Oskar’s grandfather, his story is more convoluted than Oskar’s as the way it is told is less direct and less honest. What makes his narrative unenjoyable is his character itself, especially as a reader not only gets to build a mental image of him through his own words, they also get the benefits of Oskar’s grandmother’s impressions of her wayward husband. While he is trying to justify his actions to his unborn son, his words appear as excuses even while he is simultaneously attempting to overcome his own guilt. He is not lying to himself but he is not being 100 percent honest either. The result is that he comes across to readers as cold, incapable of loving anyone other than his dead first love, and unwilling to even attempt to change.
At the same time a reader is attempting to overcome his or her aversions to either narrator, the print version of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close contains pictures, drawings, and other images that are supposed to enhance a reader’s appreciation and understanding of the story. Instead, and perhaps this is the fault of the e-book rather than the print version, these images were more of a distraction, one that jolts a reader out of the story rather than augmenting it.
That being said, there is one scene near the end, complete with pictures, that negate everything previously stated about the novel. It is the one time in which Oskar loses his inadvertent condescension and is finally able to speak the painful truth. The images that follow are painful and palpably dredge up the terror and horror that everyone throughout the nation was feeling on September 11th, 2001. It is as unforgettable a scene that ever was written in a novel.
Unfortunately, one scene, no matter how powerful, cannot overcome an entire novel filled with idiosyncrasies and foibles. While it is a scene that will haunt a reader for a long time, if not forever, the rest of the novel is too convoluted and disjointed for meaningful enjoyment. The fault lies not with the stories themselves but rather with the narrators chosen to tell the stories and the lack of bridges between narrators. The narrator shifts are abrupt, unannounced and often without any indication of which narrator is now telling his or her story. It is up to a reader to not only keep track of each narrator but also to keep the individual threads of the story together until they finally combine. This places a lot of pressure and responsibility on the reader, especially for a novel about such an emotional topic.
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is a novel that people either seem to love or feel ambivalent about it. I fall into the latter category. The entire story felt a bit too gimmicky to feel authentic. As the mother of an eight-year-old, I cannot overcome the idea of letting a child that age roam around a city, let alone New York City, by himself. While I recognize that Oskar is struggling with his grief and the sheer terror of what happened that day, his voice is not one I find appealing. As for his grandfather, he just left me feeling sick to my stomach. Again, I understand the trauma and horror of what he experienced, but his actions produce their own kind of revulsion. The penultimate scene, wherein Oskar finally reveals his father’s last message, is appropriately shocking and disturbing enough to trouble me for a long time to come, but that does not override my discomfort of the entire novel. That being said, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is a novel that will generate a myriad of reactions in readers, all of which will be as personal and unique as one’s individual experiences and reactions on September 11th. show less
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