Foer

[rich]

never forgive that parade of photos of a WTC jumper in reverse in that last
book of his

rich


On 9/14/06, Tore Rye Andersen <torerye at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> From: Otto <ottosell@[omitted]>
> To: pynchon-l@[omitted]
> Subject: Re: The Empty Page Project
>
>
> >I have to admit that I like the idea.
>
> >Never read anything of Foer -- any recommendations?
>
> >Otto
>
> Yes, I have a hearty recommendation for you: Stay away from Foer at all
> costs!!
>
> His novels are nothing but cloying schmaltz, especially 'Extremely Loud
> and
> Incredibly Close', and the typographical gambols in that novel really are
> cheap gimmicks. ELaIC more or less reads like Paul Auster for children,
> complete with cute illustrations, a standard quest motif and pearls of
> wisdom of the kind you normally expect to find in the little square books
> next to the cash register in book stores ("It's better to lose something
> than never to've had anything"; "You can't protect yourself from sorrow
> without also protecting yourself from joy"; "To try is not to be", etc.
> etc.
> (cited from memory)).
> My suspicion is that Foer is exactly as naive as the child narrator Oscar
> in
> ELaIC, and that he more or less hides behind his narrator because he
> himself
> has nothing more insightful to say about 9/11. (Of course you can't expect
> profound wisdom from a child narrator, but the sections of the novel where
> Oscar's grandparents get to speak are exactly as cloying and naive as
> Oscar's sections). Granted, ELaIC doesn't purport to provide any deep
> insights into 9/11: It is first and foremost a book about individual loss
> and sorrow (the boy Oscar loses his father on 9/11), but in the light of
> this one wonders why Foer uses 9/11 (and Dresden and Hiroshima) as the
> historical backdrop for his story: He could just as easily have killed
> Oscar's father in a car crash or a random shooting and have gotten the
> same
> simple points across.
> Oscar most of all resembles those annoying, bright kids from 80'es
> sitcoms:
> the ones who always wore butterflies and calculators and who could defuse
> any potential conflict with a cute remark, after which the family gathered
> around the kitchen table would laugh heartily, and the credits would start
> rolling. He comes across as a shallow construction of paper and ink - a
> two-dimensional mouthpiece for Foer's one-dimensional thoughts about loss.
> The success of Foer's novel really depends on whether we feel empathy for
> little Oscar, but to me he seems so artificial and so unconvincing that he
> left me utterly cold - or rather: utterly annoyed.
>
> Yeah, well, sorry if I seem to be frothing a bit at the mouth here, but
> Foer's novels really annoy me.
> So, IMHO, do yourself a favor and give Foer's novels a wide berth.
>
>
>
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