Jonathan Safran Foer

[jd]

Matthew, great article...  I feel very similarly to what he says, it's
just silly, trite, and simple.  I've not read Eggers, which he also
speaks of, but I read McSweeney's (Eggers created McSweeney's)
occasionally.  I used to love it.  People of Paper I thought - and
still think - is a good book.  However I think McSweeney's is
propgating this sort of sicky-sweet cheeseball emo-esque writing and I
really hope that my generation isn't remembered for that sort of
tripe...  reading the description of Yannick Murphy's new book I'm
just sitting there thinking, oh god, this again?  Some is better than
others but it's all just the same as far as I'm concerned... sick of
all these authors essentially copying one another, feels like the
literary equivalent of a Dashboard Confessional concert or something. 
I definitely classify it as "whiny emo writing" that is over the top
emotional with very little substance...

I saw the movie for Everything is Illuminated and liked the first 3/4
of it... maybe only the first half...  but yeah just like in the book
it pretty much fell apart in the end.  Foer does seem to have a habit
of including traumatic periods of history to generate interest &
sales.

RE: marketing, I think that a poster is gentle marketing... maybe
placing an ad somewhere in the book review section... but a big
audio-visual event (which undermines the purpose of the novel as art
form IMO) where you all line up to buy the book & get a shot at
unlocking yet another marketing ploy I do think is on the shameless
side.  I'm going because I want to see what he has to say for himself
but I pretty much agree 100% with the review as far as Extremely Loud
and Incredibly Close goes, though I did only read half of it and then
skipped to the end because I just couldn't take it any more.