Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

Thus, when a flock of birds flies by the window, the next pages just display a picture of flying birds: they reproduce visually the shock of their sudden passage. Foer mixes different genres, the epistolary novel coexisting with an illustrated narrative. The author resorts to many visual surprises: photographs, pages with only one line of text, like 'Thank you, but I'm about to burst,' or, 'Purple' written in green.

The characters are constructed boldly: the grandfather has lost the ability to speak and communicates on a notepad, the pages of which are reproduced in the book the grandmother goes blind and writes her life story on a typewriter without any ribbon. The writing is sometimes naïve, sometimes cruelly realistic. A real energy pervades the whole book, which takes us around New York and broaches various subjects, such as the bombings of Dresden, the tragedy of 9/11, Tomoyasu's reminiscence of the bombings on Hiroshima, and the broader issue of lost love. Oskar is reminiscent of juvenile narrators, like Holden Caulfield and Huckleberry Finn. This blending of humor and darkness is echoed by the blending of genres and narrative tools used by Foer. However, the existence of a message recorded on the family's answering machine by Oskar's father just before he died, and only heard by the young boy, counterbalances the sometimes comic dimensions of the book. Restoring to the voice of an inventive child enables the author to alleviate the tragedy. Foer tries to show how private events interfere with public history, focusing on the perspective of a young boy who sheds a humorous light on a dark subject, still fresh in the context of a struggle against terrorism. It raises the question of the link between real-life tragedies and the way art narrates, describes, and tries to verbalize them. Votre ami dévouée, Mademoiselle Schell'Įxtremely Loud & Incredibly Close is often described as one of the first novels dealing with the recent events of September 11th. Also, I will keep sending you checks, because you are a nice guy.

Obviously there's no need to call me when Oskar doesn't come to his lessons, because I already know, because this was my decision. I want to thank you very much for everything you have taught Oskar, particularly the conditional tense, which is weird.

I have thought about it a ton, and I have decided that it isn't obvious why Oskar should go to French lessons, so he will no longer be going to see you on Sundays like he used to.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer