cr01's Full Review: Jonathan Safran Foer - Extremely Loud & Incredibly...
There’s only one thing more annoying than coming across quirky, precocious kids in real life, and that’s reading novels about quirky, precocious kids in fiction.
There seems to be a lot of it around at the moment; from the slow burning hit The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time to Oskar, the lead character in Jonathan Safran Foer’s latest novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.
I first heard about flavour of the month author Jonathan Safran Foer, through a friend who tried to convince me that his first novel Everything is Illuminated was one of the best books ever written. I suppose it could be, but as I did not manage to get past the first half of it in two attempts, I cannot comment. While I did not personally enjoy the experience of hacking through Everything is Illuminated, I recognised the raw talent in his writing, and decided Foer was worth a second chance.
It might just be a reading phase I am going through, but I don’t particularly like my reading to be convoluted, or clever just for the sake of it. I don’t ask for much, just a straightforward but well written novel with a thought provoking storyline.
With Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, I get my interesting plot, but Foer buries it distractingly in a maze of self-indulgent twaddle and trickery. Foer could have written a classic, had only the editor the guts to keep him on the straight and narrow. On the plus side, at least I managed to finish this one.
The Story
Pre teen Oskar lives with his mother in New York. His father died in the Twin Towers a couple of years ago. We get an indication that Oskar is seriously screwed up, struggling to come to terms with his fathers death. Some of his quirky characteristics come from his fears about his father’s death – fear of public transport, lifts, high buildings and that type of thing. Oskar is a very introspective child and exceptionally self-centred, with little perception of the world about him. While he is a troubled and dislikeable boy, there is a realistic and descriptive power in Foer’s writing.
In a twist reminiscent of The Curious Incident our Oskar comes across a key in a glass vase belonging to his father, and decides to secretly unlock the mystery of the key and the contents of the box it opens. During his search, Oskar meets a number of people, tries to understand what’s happened and feels more connected to his missing father. Another flash of genius in Foer’s writing lies with the disparate way he describes how Oskar is usually so little affected by the people he meets, so deep is he in his own mire.
Interspersed with this story, is the tale of Oskar’s grandparents. Oskar’s grandfather lived in Germany and the woman he loved was razed in a wartime bombing firestorm. He married her sister, but could never open his heart to this new woman. She meanwhile, seemed to have all the resolve of a piece of battered cod, as she lets life happen to her. The story of the grandparents is written through a series of contrived letters from the grandfather to his unborn child and the grandmother through her life story.
This is where I struggle with the readability and validity of the story. The grandparent’s stories are quirky, fanciful and largely drivel. I found myself skim reading some of the grandparents story, as it appeared so inconsequential, although the sense of loss is exceptionally powerful in places.
The Style
I seem to remember once reading a Kurt Vonnegut novel, where the book had additional pictures, scribbles and notes printed into it, to help illustrate the story. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close deploys a similar tactic, and pictures from Oskar’s scrapbook are included, along with images of people jumping from the Twin Towers together with images of keys and the rest.
In the sections of the novel devoted to telling the grandparents story, I can clearly see the different writing styles of each of grandparents, and there are some very long and intense narrative, which fade to nothingness. In one section, the text is reduced to pages of single digit numbers (to signify a difficulty to communicate), and in another the lines between the words slowly start to converge, until the writing is impossible to read. This devalues this part of the story – why bother to read something with no ending?
Elsewhere, are series of pages with just two or three words on each:
Pretentious and irritating!
Summing up
I do so want to enjoy Jonathan Safran Foer’s writing. I can appreciate why so many book lovers rave over his work. It has so much going for it – lively, punchy, quirky, unusual and flowing.
However, from the books I have read so far, I also find it to be incredibly self-indulgent, laboured and frankly boring and repetitive in places. I found myself reading the words, but them just not going in.
I have a love-hate relationship with Foer's writing, and the hate is starting to win.
Link
Foer's wife Nicole Krauss has written a better novel in a similar vein
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cr01 asserts his right to be associated as the author of this review -2005-
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