Today I read "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" by Jonathan Safran Foer. I have an antagonistic veiw towards him. I think he tries to hard to present his image as a writer and writes in an unnatural style. That being said, I only liked one part of this book, where he describes a widow and her mother-in-law posting posters about her husband and her son, respectively, after September 11th. It was raw and emotional. The rest of the book, though, was unsettling in a way that was too purposeful, like JSF decided "let's think about the fairytale ending for everything AND THEN DO THE ABSOLUTE OPPOSITE." In a way that is SO NOT LIKE LIFE. Also, his protagonist was an obnoxious/precocious 12 year old. I dislike precocious narrators, because they are SO FAKE. No 12 year old travels around the city looking for the lock that this key opens. It sounds like that movie about a 6 year old who travels around new york trying to find his family with only that view finder thing. UNBELIEVABLE.
In the book JSF also had pictures. Pictures of a man falling from one of the twin towers. He (the man) looked like a toy. And I looked at the picture and thought, how could you put this in a book? My friends saw it actually happen. We were there. And I'm sure JSF was also. But this book - it is truly bad. It is not badly written, it does not have a bad story, it is just a bad book. a malevolent book.
JSF came to our english class senior year. He's friends with one of the people or his wife is or something, but whatever, he was there. and everyone was like "OMG he's SO CUTE," "OMG he's SO SMART" and I was like, when is this class over? He was what third grade teachers call "smart alecks." UGH. ok. so, i'm done with JSF and "ELAIC."
The other thing I didn't like about this book is that it could have been a short story. any book that could have been a short story SHOULD BE A SHORT STORY.
2 comments:
For once we agree that an author is bad. Everything is NOT freaking illuminated.
Ohhhhh, that's the author of "Everything is Illuminated"? God, that was the weirdest movie I've ever seen. Kinda interesting, just mostly weird. He does kinda seem like he's trying too hard to be witty and insightful. Of course, that's my judgement on the movie, not the book. But I'm sure I'd agree with you if I had read it. I just try not to read.
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