I fondly recall a particular evening in which my lovely sister, her husband, and I were driving to or from a nice dinner out when an argument sparked. Chris, always seeing the need to expand my musical education, popped in the CD Here Come the ABC's by They Might Be Giants. Cari, exasperated by her husband's supposed lameness, and, poor girl, probably having heard the same CD time after time, was not having it. One particular song, however, struck my fancy. It's called C is for Conifer. It was amazing in the dorkiest way possible. Search for this song...it will be well worth your time. Anyway, this song started the discussion of my hypothetical future offspring, and how I think it would be an excellent idea to have them listen to this CD while learning the alphabet, that way when they start school, and the teacher starts the class off by saying "C is for..." and the rest of the class shouts "Cookie!" or whatever, my kid would shout "Conifer!" I think it would be funny. She thinks it would be torture. The debate got pretty heated, and worsened when I said that, having learned that the verb to describe how monkeys swing from branch to branch is "to brachiate," I would not teach it to my kid in any other way. So, my poor child, instead of saying "let's go play on the monkey bars," never having heard this simple expression would say "let's go brachiate!" Apparently, using your children for social experimentation is not a good experience for said child or something silly like that :)
The point of this little story is to set the scene for the book I have just completed: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer. The protagonist, Oskar Schell, a boy of what I believe to be 10 years, although he changes his age at his own discretion to garner either sympathy or respect, is the perfect example of how a child under my care would turn out. This kid is brilliant. However, he's just as equally socially awkward, which, I suppose, is the very thing my sister feared my poor, hypothetical children would become. This kid is so quirky that he carries around a tambourine with him and randomly plays it wherever he goes. At one point, he is having a conversation with a store clerk, and at the end of the scene, she says "Would you mind not shaking that tambourine in the store?" (Safran Foer, 336). Before this point, there was no indication that he was even doing such a thing because, to him, it was normal. Fortunately for Oskar, he doesn't really seem to realize that he's strange.
The best part of this book is definitely the author's voice. This is a story of family, of tragedy, of growth. Anyone could write this story and I'm sure many people have. But no one can write it like this, with the exception, of course, of Mr. Safran Foer. It is beautiful, and Oskar's voice shines through perfectly. You get the feeling that you're learning something from some of the things he says, but then you are quickly reminded that he is, indeed, a child, and has so much to learn about the world. One example is that he mentions that he read in National Geographic that "there are more people alive now than have died in all of human history. In other words, if everyone wanted to play Hamlet at once, they couldn't, because there aren't enough skulls!" (293). That is, in my opinion, a pretty clever way of putting the proportions into perspective. However, he then goes on to say, in a conversation with a limo driver: "Actually, if limousines were extremely long, they wouldn't need drivers. You could just get in the back seat, walk through the limousine, and then get out of the front seat, which would be where you wanted to go" (295). This shows that, even though he is capable creative thought, which is the case in both of these scenarios, he is still lacking a sense of logic. It's really quite interesting to watch as his thoughts progress, because, even though the kid is probably a genius, it is evident that he is still, well, a kid.
Although I wouldn't say that it is the main focus, this book is extremely funny. I want to share with you a particular section from the book that made me laugh out loud for 2 minutes straight, before finally being able to tell the Ashleys (my roommates) what was so funny. Oskar was depressed about how relatively insignificant life is, and so, to change his perspective, his father pointed out that if he were in a plane and dropped down into the Sahara Desert and moved one grain of sand, he would have changed the way the world was. Oskar gets excited and says:
"I changed the course of human history!"
"That's right."
"I changed the universe!"
"You did."
"I'm God!"
"You're an atheist."
"I don't exist!"
(376)
I love comedy that builds off of itself. None of these phrases would have been funny by themselves, but this scene was put together so masterfully, I could not contain myself. Eventually, I read it to the Ashleys and they enjoyed it too. Oh yeah, and they wanted me to give them a shout-out for helping me pick out my book mark for this story. "Go Ashleys! I couldn't've done it without you!" :)
It's hard to say specifically what this book is about without giving away too much. But I think a good way of putting it is that this book is about learning to live. This is true for every character we come across, even if their reasons are not the same. Interlaced with the text of this story are letters written by a grandfather that the boy never knew. These letters reveal a similar pain from another lifetime that mirror this theme of learning to live. It shows that, although the experiences may differ, the struggles are the same. These universal struggles make this book a good read for about anyone.
Safran, Jonathan. Everything Is Illuminated Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH), 2010. Print.
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