They said that books were dead. Everything from trmtball, gardening and Lara Croft \.»v<j>uld kill them off. But they, inevitably, n'iercifully, were wrong. The power of the word has survived and simply gets stronger. Over the next seven pages, we reflect that strength and breadth, covering everything from a hip New Yorker to an urbane Gunner and from a scptuagenarian Glaswegian to a schoolboy wizard.
16 THE LIST 9-23 Jun 2005
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER is the young Turk of New York letters whose debut, Everything is Illuminated, amazed a reading public who thought that Dave Eggers was the last word in US literary clever clogs. Now his second novel is upon us and Craig McLean meets the man who appears to have it all.
n the table in the coffee room of the smart
London hotel is a copy of Extremely
Loud & Incredibly ('lnse. Jonathan Safran Foer pats it tenderly. The young American novelist is lugging the hardback copy of his new book. slip cover removed. everywhere he goes on this week-long UK trip to the Hay Festival. to Radio 3's Night Waves and to Book Jam. the literary/DJ club night in another smart London hotel. at which he‘s appearing with Dave Eggers.
He opens the cover. The Ilyleaf pages. the title pages. the pages of the actual story: all are covered with Safran Foer's inky scrawl. These are annotations and revisions he‘s making to the book. Extremely Ixrud & Incrediny (‘lrrse took him something like 39 drafts to write. This second novel. the follow—up to the 2002 publishing sensation Everything is Illuminated. began life as another story. called The chnick Museum. But gradually. methodically. Safran I’oer replaced almost all of the characters and ideas he had written. and sculpted a new book. I:‘.\'tremely Laud & Incredibly Close. the story of a nine-year-old New York boy coming to terms with his father‘s death in 9/I l. is the brilliant result.
But even now that it‘s published. after all that graft. Safran Foer doesn‘t think it‘s finished. ‘livery page I have ideas.‘ he says. ‘Things I wanna insert or remove.‘ To what end is he doing this‘.’ For a revised paperback edition? ‘No. Just ‘cause that's what I do.’ Safran Foer illustrates his point with an analogy. ‘lmagine if someone took a photograph of you. and you went back to your room and you looked in the mirror and you saw there’s something really wrong with your face: maybe your hair was sticking up. You‘d fix it. Even though the photograph was over and nobody‘s gonna see you. Just because . . . you prefer things to be right.‘
In the run-up to publication of the paperback of Everything is Illuminated. his publisher told him this was an opportunity to change things. Safran Foer had amendments for every single page of the debut novel hailed around the world as a masterpiece. He thought long and hard about incorporating these changes. But no. ‘I said what I had to say at the time. As I‘ve changed I don't want to force my books to catch up with me. You write another book or you do something else.‘
Extremely Ixrml & Incredibly Close is told from the viewpoint of ()skar Schell. Finding a mysterious key and envelope in his dad‘s belongings. he embarks on a quest across New York's five boroughs to find the owner. Like 28- year-old Princeton graduate Safran lioer. ()skar is precociously talented. pernickety and ultra-smart. Like his creator who is obsessed with the idea of collections — if he likes some trousers. Safran lioer will buy six pairs — ()skar clings on to things: white clothes: the security of his imagination: his grandmother; his dad's last. increasingly panicked answering machine messages.
Oskar’s search. hilariously funny and desperately moving. is interspersed with other
voices — those of his mysteriously absent grandfather and his traumatised grandmother — and scenes from other sites of infamous urban catastrophe. Dresden and Hiroshima. As well as words. the story incorporates photographs and several largely blank pages. The book plays with the very layout of the type. liven the choice of paper (especially weighty) and the look of the spine were part of Safran lioer's literary vision.
‘I wanted everything to feel integral. Books are these really intimate objects. They smell a certain way; there's a certain heaviness.’ He picks up his hardback. ‘I wanted this to be an object. like a little sculpture.‘ All of which could amount to a tricksy. post-Eggers load of clever- clever nothingness. Luckily. at heart it‘s a great story. wonderfully and empathetically told. Safran lioer says he wasn't trying to ‘chronicle‘ the aftermath of the terrible events that befell his adopted hometown (he lives in Brooklyn but is from Washington I)(‘). Despite his intellectual manner. he insists he had no hi-falutin‘ aspirations to capture the post-9H I zeitgeist.
‘I didn‘t have a definitive story to tell or a point to make. 1 just wanted to add another version to the mix. All of the versions that were being told in America were very politicised or very commercialised. And they had nothing to do with the way that I experienced or remembered the day. which has more to do with sadness and some fear. not vengeance or anger.’
Safran Foer has been talking with Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the .S'pntless Mind) about the film of his new book. and is hopeful the visionary French director will take on the project. This September the film of Everything is Illuminated. his novelised story of his own search for family roots in the Ukraine. is released. The impressionistic book. which features a character called Jonathan Safran lioer. has been adapted and directed by actor Liev Schreiber ('I'he Manchurian Candidate). The lead role is played by lilijah Wood. liarlier this year its author visited the Prague set.
Was it strange seeing his imagined world brought to life‘.’ ‘liorget about my imagined world!‘ laughs Safran lioer. a table tennis fanatic whose next project is a libretto for a (ierman opera. ‘I saw someone dressed up like me. with my name! Glasses. the whole thing! I got to the set. nobody knew who I was. All I hear is lcrew shouting out]. “We need to find Jonathan and Jonathan‘s grandmother. Anybody know where Jonathan is?“ It was very weird..
And was he thinking. ‘Now the world's gonna see me as l’rodo‘.”
‘Yeah. but it could have been worse.‘ Safran lioer. half of New York's ‘golden literary couple’ (his wife is novelist Nicole Krauss). chuckles. ‘Now girls are gonna flock to my readings.~
Extremer Loud 8: Incredibly Close is out now published by Hamish Hamilton.