Jonathan Safran Foer's About Wrapped Up My Enthusiasm for "Top 20 Under 40" Novels / Writing

"Everything is Illuminated" seemed not to work exactly the way it could have, and might have, if Jonathan Safran Foer wrote his novel in a way that synced with my tastes and made me want to read more of his writing.

If, for instance, Alex was written less cloyingly and didn't remind me of Balki Bartokomous of the '80s sitcom "Perfect Strangers," with all the pair's shared imprecise English diction and turns of phrase. If, for instance, the entire plot didn't strike me as ground already trodden in more interesting ways, which is entirely subjective, true, but my subjectivity compels me to say it anyway. If he hadn't write his novel with nearly identical structural similarities to those of his wife's "The History of Love." If his only other story I'd heretofore encountered, "Here We Aren't, So Quickly," hadn't made me want to pull my hair out so quickly (which is part of why I'm more forgiving of Nicole Krauss' complicity in making her novel structurally similar to JSF's, if this was indeed a purposeful act perpetrated by either or both of them, which I concede it probably wasn't purposeful but still rubs me the wrong way; I liked Krauss' "The Young Painters").

I was told, as I mention in my post on "The History of Love," to read Jonathan Safran Foer after finishing Krauss' novel, because their writing in a multitude of ways seems very mutually influenced, or maybe one has exercised much more influence over the other. If that were the case it would likely be Jonathan Safran Foer whose "Everything is Illuminated" came before "The History of Love," but then not before Krauss' "Man Walks into A Room," so who knows? I haven't read the latter book, though I might.

Point is, comparing "The History of Love" to "Everything is Illuminated" proved an easy task. Weird idiosyncratic and sometimes-to-always idiomatic English put forth by an Eastern European? Check, i.e. Alex Perchov and Leo Gursky / Misha. Holocaust love story around which each narrative turns? Check. Inquisitive youth in present day trying to discern the true story about and details of said Holocaust love story? CHECK, i.e. Jonathan and Alma. Story broken down into chapters told from various points of view of previously mentioned similar characters, plus chapters detailing extraneous bits of information in third person narration about Holocaust love story? Extremely CHECK, i.e. back story of Trachimbrod and Litvinoff's "The History of Love." Even the younger brothers of Alex and Alma are similar, possessing unusual cognomens, i.e. Little Igor and Bird.

There are surely more similarities, but I'm tired of addressing them all. These I think shall suffice. More to the point, does it matter that a husband and wife each wrote a novel that is similar to the other's? No, or at least it's easy to argue it doesn't matter at all, especially if the quality of the writing is good and the story is told effectively. Bottom line? Safran Foer's novel didn't do it for me. This, and so much of what all I write about here, is largely opinion based. In fact, we could get into the real abstraction of certainty (which I've been avidly reading Ludwig Wittgenstein's "On Certainty"), and how even the so-called empirical sciences could, if parsed by their semantical meaning, could be rendered products of subjectivity just the same as the gray area of literary inference, but that might get impossibly beside the point and also possibly drive me insane. Instead, I'll acknowledge precisely how much my own opinion has led me to feel that "Everything is Illuminated" simply does not work, isn't to my tastes. Parts of it were amusing, to Safran Foer's credit. And I refuse to say he's untalented. He is. I just think his talent is misused here.

Also, I really didn't like "Here We Aren't, So Quickly" -- which this story struck me as the kind of pretentious work one will churn out in a highly pretentious MFA creative writing program, if you want to know.

As for thoughts lingering about the "Top 20 Under 40": I fully intend to read Chris Adrian's "Gob's Grief." I have it in my possession and it seems like a very interesting first time attempt, which I might then juxtapose with "Everything is Illuminated." See how these narratives might then be tied together, alle zusammen richtig ist!

Now They Tell Me I Have to Read Jonathan Safran Foer

I finished "The History of Love" by Nicole Krauss, who is also -- it seems -- Jonathan Safran Foer's wife. They live together in the same home, I hear, and talk to each other as a result, or at least I'm willing to bet they do. I have no concrete evidence of their many (probable) exchanges, some of which might well be intimate! Who knows? I'm getting off topic and probably sounding a smidgen envious. Of who, precisely? Let your imagination run wild!

N-E-wayz, I enjoyed Krauss' fiction published in the New Yorker recently (before I knew she was married, or to whom, so you'll have to excuse my obliviousness), and I wanted to check out a novel of hers, accordingly. So I have, "The History of Love," as said. Plainly stated, the novel is mostly good with a certain amount of saccharine schmaltz that muddies it more than I would deem ideal. And yet, she uses "and yet" -- the characteristic expression of Leo Gursky, one of two characters the novel mainly concerns -- to great effect. I am perhaps alone in feeling the way I do about this, but I've decided it was appropriate in every instance it was employed, nicely timed and not overdone, despite its being often used. But that's just one thing.

Friends who've read both authors (i.e. Jonathan S. Foer and Krauss), who are more "in the know" about these two writers (because they've read both and not just one), tell me I have to read JSF, if for no other reason than the following: the two authors' styles and motifs are, they say, awfully similar. It's possible that this authorial tandem, husband & wife style, has been negatively impacted, creatively speaking, by their close proximity to one another, i.e. their marriage and life together. And if true, brings me to my next point: no marriages. Ok, ooookkkk, hold on. I'll agree to end the marriage ban on one condition: someone send me free books all the time. Or how about this? At discounted rates of the very variety. No? Fine. Great, once again I'm left with nothing, but oh well. At least I have books (-- not very discounted, though).

And one of those books is "The History of Love." I'm not sure if it's a complete history, the definite article preceding "History of Love" certainly implies that this is so, and yet . . .

Krauss nicely layers things. You begin by not knowing which way is up, which in my view is often a nice place to begin. The story is, at that point, the narrative of Leo Gursky, a man in exile from life lived, simply existing without companionship of near every kind. The best he can do is his upstairs tenant-mate, Bruno, a childhood friend who has reappeared later in life, after both men have resettled and long resided in America. Bruno may or may not be real (spoiler: he almost certainly isn't). Leo, meanwhile, is pursuing contact with his son, a professional author who doesn't even know Leo is his father. Leo falls into the locksmith trade, on arrival in America, because of a relative already in that business. Leo in turn becomes a skilled locksmith, the irony of which being he can open any door except those that matter most, the metaphorical ones that keep him from the people he'd like to be nearest to.

Meanwhile, there's young Alma Singer whose mother is depressed, having never quite gotten over the loss of her husband, Alma's father, and whose brother thinks he might be the messiah. Things change for the family when a letter arrives from a man asking Alma's mother to translate the novel, "The History of Love," a book which already has relevance in their lives for its making a profound impact on her father, who passed the book on to Alma's mother with the notation, to paraphrase, that it was the novel he would write for her if he could write.

I don't want to describe much more, as I feel that would run the risk of giving too much of the plot away (something I'm honestly trying to avoid in general on the old blog here). The other main component concerns the ostensible author of "The History of Love" -- Zvi Litvinoff. As you might imagine all the layers of this story converge, as each character's life crosses the others. It works in the end, though in a near dangerously schmaltzy manner, as said.

So now on to Jonathan Safran Foer, to see what I think about all that . . .

Top 20 Under 40: A Play by Play Update Deal

I haven't posted in a few days BUT I've wanted to, so in lieu of a fully fleshed out review or whatever else I normally do, I've decided to blog a bit about the Top 20 Under 40 New Yorker Lit Edition I've recently gotten my grubby hands on, smudging the pages and such. (--And yes, the preceding was a very long overwrought sentence. Would you expect any better from me? I should hope not, not by now. After all we've been through.)

And so on,

Look, I don't want to say that I hate Jonathan Safran Foer. I have several friends who are great fans of his work. And that might be the same as saying something like, "I have a lot of gay friends" and then unloading some seriously homophobic remark. But anyway, what's the deal, huh? Does his style strike anyone else as maybe a smidgen tediously bull-shitty? I confess I've only ever read the opening pages to "Everything is Illuminated" and his latest New Yorker entry, "Here We Aren't, So Quickly." But how am I supposed to feel about lines like: "We went to Tobey Pond every year until we didn't"? And it would be one thing if the story were told in a way that glossed over an unspectacular line or two, but in this one it seems to revel in them. We're all allowed to be inventive with prose, skilled writers like Safran Foer especially, but I've not recently found inventiveness that was this boring. That is possibly my fault, though.

Other than Safran Foer the only other New Yorker Top 20 Under 40 I've read is Joshua Ferris' "The Pilot" -- which I liked in certain ways, especially with regard to the dithering of the main character, who wrestled with the uncertain question of whether he was truly invited to a party or not. Without giving anything away, I'll just say my attitude is that the ending sort of fell flat when there were a lot of possibilities that might have made for a more climactic conclusion. Doesn't quite live up to his last New Yorker short story, "The Valetudinarian."