The Empty Page Project

[jd]

Everything is Illuminated, if you have to read him.  It's still rather
bleah but when I read it the first time I remember thinking that it
was unique enough that I was looking forward to the more refined, less
(again) sophomoric product that would come as he grew into himself.
But he's only gone downhill from there, and after reading this, seeing
his quasi-documentary on meat processing, and seeing him in person
during an extremely boring and incredibly gimmicky audio-visual book
tour stop (during which he read the last pages of his new book which
many in the audience hadn't read yet), I've given up all hope that
he's anything more than an airhead.  Extremely Loud and Incredibly
Close is so cutesy that it's unreadable.  Even my girlfriend, who
likes cutesy stuff quite a bit as well as emo-ish stuff, couldn't make
it more than twenty pages in, and the end of the book so blatantly
rips of a bit in Slaughter-House Five that I'm kind of surprised that
Vonnegut hasn't bitch-slapped him publicly yet.

On 9/14/06, Otto <ottosell at googlemail.com> wrote:
> I have to admit that I like the idea.
>
> Never read anything of Foer -- any recommendations?
>
> Otto
>