Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Foer

When Something is Nothing

Add Milan Kundera's, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" to the list of books Johathan Safran Foer chose to emulate in his "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close".  To emulate style is a high sign of flattery and I think ok from a literary perspective.  To emulate plot, stories, and characters...well not so much...but it's still all fiction.  I have not read the books that Foer has presumably lifted his plot and character from but I will.  Why?  Because I liked this book and want more of it.  I don't necessarily care where the creative inspiration for some of what he does comes from, I'm just glad he was inspired and took us for this ride...this journey of nine year old Oskar Schell... as he tries to put his life together following the death of his father in the World Trade Center attacks.  

Oskar no doubt (and no doubt Foer as well) has attention deficit disorder.  The energy of his fast paced writing and wide ranging thoughts leave no doubt as to this diagnosis.  Since Foer adeptly articulates a child's short attention span he gives us breaks, thankfully, from Oskar's high energy narratives by letting us read letters written to his father.  These letters are from his grand parents who both survived the firebombing of Dresden during World War II (Shades of Vonnegut).  The letters are of a much slower pace and provide the secondary and tertiary stories that intertwine with Oskar's.  His grandparents lost families, lost each other, and then lost their only son who, of course, was Oskar's father.  Oskar is not alone in his suffering or his secrets.  As Oskar travels New York we meet many other's who are suffering, in various ways,  on his journey to find a lock to fit the key to how his father died.  His secrets and many others are unlocked along the way. 

This book is heavy, you know it's heavy when it's hard to breath.  There is something and their is nothing.  There is something to see and nothing to see. There is noise and there is silence.  There is something to hear and something not to be heard...ever again.   Maybe Foer took some poetic license or grabbed creative techniques from others, but there can be no doubt this emotional story about ordinary people trying to maintain ordinary lives though extreme circumstances has a healing quality.  We all have lost something and tend to keep that loss a secret, believing that it is something.  Should we continue in silence and forever search for that something only to discover that it might be nothing?  This book attempts to answer that question.