Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer

To plagiarize (almost!) one of my favorite singers, Elton John, “[Death, the loss of a beloved one]…seems to be the hardest word”, or rather the hardest subject to tackle in literature, especially when related to the defining moment of the first year of the twenty-first century, 9/11.
That is the challenge Jonathan Safran Foer set himself for and wrote with a mastery that has yet to find another equal. Of course 9/11 as a topic has already been treated in literature and amongst the first was French writer Frederic Beigbeder with Windows on the World, and later on British writer Ian McEwan, with Saturday. What makes Jonathan Safran Foer stands apart is not his youth -Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is “only” his second book, but a masterpiece-, but his sensitivity. Mc Ewan’s usual gloominess and British sense of wit and Beigbeder’s incommensurable and insufferable arrogance, permanent self-congratulation and introspection “à la BHL” quickly leave the reader ill at ease if not truly annoyed in the case of the latter.
Foer’s story is antipodal to these other novels. 9/11, the ultimate traumatic event, is told as perceived by Oscar Schell, whose Dad died in the restaurant Windows on the World. At the time of the narration two years have passed, but Oscar is still a wounded child and still looking for clues. Or is he just desperately wanting for clues to exist, for the ‘goodbye” word that was never left on the answer phone messages by his trapped at the top of the world Dad?
The author manages to give us a view of the world according to Oscar, gifted and talented child, and like many of them, over anxious. His world is not an ordinary child’s; 9/11 and an IQ way above the average do not make it easy for a little boy to have friends of his own age.
The story of Oscar’s 9/11 also becomes the story of his paternal family’s many traumas: the Dresden bombings are intertwined to his own presentation of the effects of Hiroshima and to the general theme of 9/11. Oscar’s quest for clues is also his way of finding closure, to come to terms with his Dad’s death. What he will also achieve is bring healing to the wounds carried by his grand-mother and his grand-father. The author cleverly gave voice to these characters, in ways that will probably be imitated by other authors in the future: polyphony is quite original in itself, but when it comes accompanied with pictures, colors, and other meta-textual clues, it has no equal yet.

Sarah Pickup-Diligenti ©June 2006