Look at me, already attempting to make a dent in my New Year’s Resolution. Yesterday I bought two books on my Kindle in the hopes that I would start
photo courtesy of oprah.com
something before school starts. I knew that if I didn’t get something rolling before school, then it would be all the more difficult to crack a book for pleasure. So I let Amazon do the recommending and I bought A Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood and the book I just started Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer.
In keeping with the theme of the book, this novel is by turns extremely funny and incredibly sad. Narrated by a young boy in New York, who is a self-proclaimed pacifist, vegan, amateur epidemiologist, among other unique titles, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is quickly becoming a fascinating book. I love the rambling narration and Oskar’s quirkiness and peculiar view of the world. Writing from a child’s perspective and making it sound honest and fresh may be one of the most difficult techniques, but Foer seems to do it effortlessly. Take this passage, for instance (I know it’s long, but it’s totally worth it):
The next morning I told Mom I couldn’t go to school again. She asked what was wrong. I told her, “The same things that’s always wrong.” “You’re sick?” “I’m sad.” “About Dad?” “About everything.” She sat down on the bed next to me, even though I knew she was in a hurry. “What’s everything?” I started counting on my fingers: “The meat and dairy products in our refrigerator, fistfights, car accidents Larry—” “Who’s Larry?” “The homeless guys in front of the Museum of Natural History who always says ‘I promise it’s for food’ after he asks for money.” She turned around and I zipped her dress while I kept counting. “How you don’t know who Larry is, even though you probably see him all the time, how Buckminster [his cat] just sleeps and eats and goes to the bathroom and has no raison d’être, the short ugly guys with no neck who takes tickets at the IMAX theater, how the sun is going to explode one day, how every birthday I always get at least one thing I already have, poor people who get fat because they eat junk food because it’s cheaper…” That was when I ran out of fingers, but my list was just getting started, and I wanted it to be long because I knew she wouldn’t leave while I was still going”…domesticated animals, how I have a domesticated animal, nightmares, Microsoft Windows, old people who sit around all day because no one remembers to spend time with them and they’re too embarrassed to ask people to spend time with them, secrets, dial phones, how Chinese people own Mexican restaurants but Mexican people never own Chinese restaurants, mirrors, tape decks, my unpopularity at school, Grandma’s coupons, storage facilities, people who don’t know what the Internet is, bad handwriting, beautiful songs, how there won’t be humans in fifty years—” “Who said there won’t be humans in fifty years?” I asked her, “Are you an optimist or a pessimist?” She looked at her watch and said, “I’m optimistic.” “Then I have some bad news for you, because humans are going to destroy each other as soon as it becomes easy enough to, which will be very soon.” “Why do beautiful songs make you sad?” “Because they aren’t true.” “Never?” “Nothing is beautiful and true.” She smiled, but in a way that wasn’t just happy, and said, “You sound just like Dad.”
Phew! That was long. It’s so touching, though. I’m struck by how his unpopularity and Microsoft Windows are both sad to him with no qualifiers. It’s all just sad. And each of those items on the list mean enough to him to be worthy of his emotional investment, in this case, sadness. Foer did an amazing thing making his main protagonist a thoughtful, yet spunky kid who adults are able to relate to. Who isn’t sad at times about both deeply personal and seemingly mundane events? I’m about 35% of the way through the book (yeah, Kindle! Incorporating maths into reading…) and I have a feeling the next 65% will go by just as quickly. Thankfully, I have another book lined up already!
