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Executive Times |
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2005 Book Reviews |
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Extremely
Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer |
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Rating:
••• (Recommended) |
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Click on
title or picture to buy from amazon.com |
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Grief Extremely
Loud and Incredibly Close is Jonathan Safran Foer’s creative contribution to the growing collection of
art that has responded to the tragic events of 9/11. The protagonist of this
well-written novel is nine-year-old Oskar Schell,
whose father died at the Here’s
an excerpt, from the beginning of the chapter titled, “Googolplex,” pp.
35-42: As for the bracelet Mom
wore to the funeral, what I did was I converted Dad’s last voice message
into Morse code, and I used sky-blue beads for silence, maroon beads for
breaks between letters, violet beads for breaks between words, and long and
short pieces of string between the beads for long and short beeps, which are
actually called blips, I think, or something. Dad would have known. It took
me nine hours to make, and I had thought about giving it to Sonny, the homeless
person who I sometimes see standing outside the Alliance Française,
because he puts me in heavy boots, or maybe to Lindy, the neat old woman who
volunteers to give tours at the Museum of Natural History, so I could be
something special to her, or even just to someone in a wheelchair. But
instead I gave it to Mom. She said it was the best gift she’d ever received.
I asked her if it was better than the Edible Tsunami, from when I was interested
in edible meteorological events. She said, “Different.” I asked her if she
was in love with Ron. She said, “Ron is a great person,” which was an answer
to a question I didn’t ask. So I asked again. “True or false: you are in love
with Ron.” She put her hand with the ring on it in her hair and said, “Oskar, Ron is my friend.” I was going to ask her
if she was humping her friend, and if she had said yes, I would have run
away, and if she had said no, I would have asked if they heavy-petted each
other, which I know about. I wanted to tell her she shouldn’t be playing
Scrabble yet. Or looking in the mirror. Or turning the stereo any louder than
what you needed just to hear it. It wasn’t fair to Dad, and it wasn’t fair to
me. But I buried it all inside me. I made her other Morse code jewelry with
Dad’s messages — a necklace, an
anklet, some dangly earrings, a tiara — but
the bracelet was definitely the most beautiful, probably because it was the
last, which made it the most precious. “Mom?” “Yes?” “Nothing.” Even after a year, I
still had an extremely difficult time doing certain things, like taking
showers, for some reason, and getting into elevators, obviously. There was a
lot of stuff that made me panicky, like suspension bridges, germs, airplanes,
fireworks, Arab people on the subway (even though I’m not racist), Arab
people in restaurants and coffee shops and other public places, scaffolding,
sewers and subway grates, bags without owners, shoes, people with mustaches,
smoke, knots, tall buildings, turbans. A lot of the time I’d get that feeling
like I was in the middle of a huge black ocean, or in deep space, but not in
the fascinating way. It’s just that everything was incredibly far away from
me. It was worst at night. I started inventing things, and then I couldn’t
stop, like beavers, which I know about. People think they cut down trees so
they can build dams, but in reality it’s because their teeth never stop
growing, and if they didn’t constantly file them down by cutting through all
of those trees, their teeth would start to grow into their own faces, which
would kill them. That’s how my brain was. One night, after what
felt like a googolplex inventions, I went to Dad’s closet. We used to
Greco-Roman wrestle on the floor in there, and tell hilarious jokes, and once
we hung a pendulum from the ceiling and put a circle of dominoes on the floor
to prove that the earth rotated. But I hadn’t gone back in since he died.
Mom was with Ron in the living room, listening to music too loud and playing
board games. She wasn’t missing Dad. I held the doorknob for a while before I
turned it. Even though Dad’s coffin
was empty, his closet was full. And even after more than a year, it still
smelled like shaving. I touched all of his white T-shirts. I touched his fancy
watch that he never wore and the extra laces for his sneakers that would
never run around the reservoir again. I put my hands into the pockets of all
of his jackets (I found a receipt for a cab, a wrapper from a miniature Kraclde, and the business card of a diamond supplier). I
put my feet into his slippers. I looked at myself in his metal shoehorn. The
average person falls asleep in seven minutes, but I couldn’t sleep, not after
hours, and it made my boots lighter to be around his things, and to touch
stuff that he had touched, and to make the hangers hang a little straighter,
even though I knew it didn’t matter. His tuxedo was over the
chair he used to sit on when he tied his shoes, and I thought, Weird. Why
wasn’t it hung up with his suits? Had he come from a fancy party the night
before he died? But then why would he have taken off his tuxedo without
hanging it up? Maybe it needed to be cleaned? But I didn’t remember a fancy
party. I remembered him tucking me in, and us listening to a person speaking
Greek on the shortwave radio, and him telling me a story about There was a pretty blue
vase on the highest shelf. What was a pretty blue vase doing way up there? I
couldn’t reach it, obviously, so I moved over the chair with the tuxedo still
on it, and then I went to my room to get the Collected Shakespeare set
that Grandma bought for me when she found out that I was going to be Yorick, and I brought those over, four tragedies at a
time, until I had a stack that was tall enough. I stood on all of that and it
worked for a second. But then I had the tips of my fingers on the vase, and
the tragedies started to wobble, and the tuxedo was incredibly distracting,
and the next thing was that everything was on the floor, including me, and
including the vase, which had shattered. “I didn’t do it!” I hollered, but
they didn’t even hear me, because they were playing music too loud and
cracking up too much. I zipped myself all the way into the sleeping bag of
myself, not because I was hurt, and not because I had broken something, but
because they were cracking up. Even though I knew I shouldn’t, I gave myself
a bruise. I started to clean
everything up, and that was when I noticed something else weird. In the
middle of all of that glass was a little envelope, about the size of a
wireless Internet card. What the? I opened it up, and inside there was
a key. What the, what the? It was a weird-looking key, obviously to
something extremely important, because it was fatter and shorter than a
normal key. I couldn’t explain it: a fat and short key, in a little envelope,
in a blue vase, on the highest shelf in his closet. The first thing I did was the logical
thing, which was to be very Secretive and try the key in all of the locks in
the apartment. Even without trying I knew it wasn’t for the front door,
because it didn’t match up with the key that I wear on a string around my
neck to let myself in when nobody’s home. I tiptoed so I wouldn’t be noticed,
and I tried the key in the door to the bathroom, and the different bedroom
doors, and the drawers in Mom’s dresser. I tried it in the desk in the
kitchen where Dad used to pay the bills, and in the closet next to the linen
closet where I sometimes hid when we played hide and seek, and in Mom’s
jewelry box. But it wasn’t for any of them. In bed that night I
invented a special drain that would be underneath every pillow in Anyway. The next morning I told
Mom that I couldn’t go to school, because I was too sick. It was the first
lie that I had to tell. She put her hand on my forehead and said, “You do
feel a bit hot.” I said, “I took my temperature and it’s
one hundred point seven degrees.” That was the second lie. She turned around
and asked me to zip up the back of her dress, which she could have done
herself, but she knew that I loved to do it. She said, “I’ll be in and out of
meetings all day, but Grandma can come by if you need anything, and I’ll call
to check on you every hour.” I told her, “If I don’t answer, I’m probably
sleeping or going to the bathroom.” She said, “Answer.” Once she left for work, I
put on my clothes and went downstairs. Stan was sweeping up in front of the
building. I tried to get past him without him noticing, but he noticed. “You
don’t look sick,” he said, brushing a bunch of leaves into the street. I told
him, “I feel sick.” He asked, “Where’s Mr. Feeling Sick going?” I told him,
“To the drugstore on Eighty-fourth to get some cough drops.” Lie #3. Where I
actually went was the locksmith’s store, which is Frazer and Sons, on
Seventy-ninth. “Need some more copies?”
Walt asked. I gave him a high-five, and I showed him the key that I had
found, and asked him what he could tell me about it. “It’s for some kind of
lockbox,” he said, holding it up to his face and looking at it over his
glasses. “A safe, I’m guessing. You can tell it’s for a lockbox by its
build.” He showed me a rack that had a ton of keys on it. “See, it’s not like
any of these. It’s much thicker. Harder to break.” I touched all the keys
that I could reach, and that made me feel OK, for some reason. “But it’s not
for a fixed safe, I don’t think. Nothing too big. Maybe something portable.
Could be a safe-deposit box, actually. An old one. Or some kind of
fire-retardant cabinet.” That made me crack up a little, even though I know
there’s nothing funny about being a mental retard. “It’s an old key,” he
said. “Could be twenty, thirty years old.” “How can you tell?” “Keys are what
I know.” “You’re cool.” “And not many lockboxes use keys anymore.” “They
don’t?” “Well, hardly anyone uses keys anymore.” “I use keys,” I told him,
and I showed him my apartment key. “I know you do,” he said. “But people like
you are a dying breed. It’s all electronic these days. Keypads. Thumbprint
recognition.” “That’s so awesome.” “I like keys.” I thought for a minute, and
then I got heavy, heavy boots. “Well, if people like me are a dying breed,
then what’s going to happen to your business?” “We’ll become specialized,”
he said, “like a typewriter shop. We’re useful now, but soon we’ll be
interesting.” “Maybe you need a new business.” “I like this business.” I said, “I have a
question that I was just wondering.” He said, “Shoot.” “Shoot?” “Shoot. Go
ahead. Ask.” “Are you Frazer, or are you Son?” “I’m Grandson, actually. My
grandfather started the shop.” “Cool.” “But I suppose I’m also Son,
since my dad ran things when he was alive. I guess I’m Frazer, too, since my
son works here during the summers.” I said, “I have another
question.” “Shoot.” “Do you think I could find the company that made this
key?” “Anyone could’ve made it.” “Well then, what I want to know is how can I
find the lock that it opens?” “I’m afraid I can’t help you with that, any
more than telling you to try it in every lock you come across. I could always
make you a copy, if you’d like.” “I could have a googolplex keys.”
“Googolplex?” “A googol to the googol power.” “Googol?” “That’s a one with
one hundred zeroes after it.” He put his hand on my shoulder and said, “You
need the lock.” I reached up real high and put my hand on his shoulder and
said, “Yeah.” As I was leaving he
asked, “Shouldn’t you be in school?” I thought fast and told him, “It’s Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day.” Lie #4. “I thought that was in January.” “It
used to be.” Lie #5. When I got back to the
apartment, Stan said, “You’ve got mail!” Dear Osk, Hello,
lad! Thanks for your glorious letter and the bulletproof drumsticks, which I
hope I’ll never have to use! I have to confess, I’ve never thought too much
about giving lessons... I
hope you like the enclosed T-shirt, which I took the liberty of signing for you. Your
mate, Ringo I didn’t like the
enclosed T-shirt. I loved it! Although unfortunately it wasn’t white,
so I couldn’t wear it. I laminated Ringo’s letter and tacked it to my wall. Then I did some
research on the Internet about the locks of “Schell residence . . . Hi, Mom . . . A little bit, I guess, but still pretty
sick. . . No. . . Uh-huh. . . Uh-huh. . . I guess. . . I think I’ll order Indian. . . But still. . . OK. Uh-huh. I will. . . I know.. . I know... Bye.” I timed myself and it
took me 3 seconds to open a lock. Then I figured out that if a baby is born
in That night, I put on my
white gloves, went to the garbage can in Dad’s closet, and opened the bag
that I’d thrown all of the pieces of the vase into. I was looking for clues
that might lead me in a direction. I had to be extremely careful so that I
wouldn’t contaminate the evidence, or let Mom know what I was doing, or cut
and infect myself, and I found the envelope that the key was in. It was then
that I noticed something that a good detective would have noticed at the very
beginning: the word “Black” was written on the back of the envelope. I was
so mad at myself for not noticing it before that I gave myself a little
bruise. Dad’s handwriting was weird. It looked sloppy, like he was writing
in a hurry, or writing down the word while he was on the phone, or just
thinking about something else. So what would he have been thinking about? I Googled
around and found out that Black wasn’t the name of a company that made
lockboxes. I got a little disappointed, because it would have been a logical
explanation, which is always the best kind, although fortunately it isn’t
the only kind. Then I found out that there was a place called Black in every
state in the country, and actually in almost every country in the world. In Foer’s talent continues to grow, and Extremely
Loud presents his writing skills in even more creative ways than readers
normally see. The photo flip-book section was disturbing and appropriate. Oskar’s grief matches our own, and at time the emotional
tightness readers may feel while reading Extremely
Loud parallels whatever grief we feel in our own lives. Steve Hopkins,
April 23, 2005 |
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Loud @ amazon.com |
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ã 2005 Hopkins and Company, LLC The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the May 2005
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Extremely
Loud.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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