andamu

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

by Jonathan Safran Foer

Treatment of 9/11 and the Dresden bombing:
Foer had come under fire from a few irate reviewers because he "dared" to write about the 9/11 tragedy.
I thought that Foer's treatment of 9/11 seemed appropriate within the context of the book. He did not sensationalize it, he did not demonize the attackers, he did not dwell repeatedly and extensively on the grisly details. However asking him, as a New Yorker, not to write about 9/11 would be like asking someone to ignore the 800 pound gorilla in the living room.

While 9/11 would be in most people's lexicon and references to it are enough, Dresden (more than sixty years ago) no longer is. I can understand his need to explain and illustrate (verbally) the events, especially in the context of the grandfather's extreme reaction to them.

Characterization:
I found most of the characters to be drawn well, and Oskar to be quite believable. The characters I had the greatest difficulty with were the grandparents, and I would have been inclined to have dismissed them as fancies of Oskar, were it not for the fact that they told their own stories independently, corroborating each other.

The graphic elements:
Hmm.

Firstly, I think the general reaction to them seemed too extreme. I don't think that they signal the demise of the book as we know it, nor do I think they are an indicator of all that ails society or the youth of today etc. The furore over e.e. cummings' antics proved needless - occasionally a poet will use an isolated instance of his typographic pyrotechnics for a particular purpose i.e. it has found its niche, and appropriately so.

I think Foer is demonstrating that our current concept of novel could bear expansion; his was an extreme, over the top sample but, given his particular subject matter, appropriate. While not every novel does this, the idea of representing a business card centered (and at times even outlined) within the text of the page, or perhaps a plaque or sign in larger type, have existed for years. Certainly letters and diary entries are represented appropriately with right-justified addresses, dated headings and the like. This is taking the same concept to the next level (sorry, several levels). Foer is not just telling us (the pen testing, the images, the grandfather's notebooks etc) but *showing* us.

In this particular novel, I kept imagining the main text to be in a journal kept by Oskar, perhaps even written in his hand, with the sheets, pictures, letters, pages from other notebooks to be pasted into that journal. Overall for me it added to the poignancy.

Would I wish every novel to be this way? Certainly not! But then again, I don't consider that to be a serious likelihood.

The novel:
Poignancy is a recurring word for me when I think about the novel. The strongest theme for me is that of loss, in so many different ways. Oskar's loss was brought about by 9/11, but really it might have been in any of a number of different circumstances. And the people around him, along with the people he meets on his quest, demonstrate that point - loss occurs all around us for all sorts of reasons, affecting us in many different ways.

The accompanying theme that is frequently overlooked though is the one of healing and recovery; there are as many different ways of recovery as there are loss, and everyone is in a different stage of the healing process.

Overall I think the story was handled well with only occasional heavy-handedness, we were made to care about Oskar although less successfully about his grandparents, the tone during Oskar's narrative remained consistent and believable without descending into syrup, and suspense was created on several different levels: Oskar's quest; the grandparents' story; Oskar's emotional state to name but a few. I personally found the grandparents' story the weakest part of the novel, and the one where the peculiarities seemed the most far-fetched.

On my personal five-star scale I don't think I can bring myself to quite assign it four stars; three and a half will do.