Reading and Writing in a Digital Age

“Brod’s life was a slow realization that the world was not for her, and that for whatever reason, she would never be happy and honest at the same time. She felt as if she were brimming, always producing and hoarding more love inside her. But there was no release…

So she had to satisfy herself with the idea of love–loving the loving of things whose existence she didn’t care at all about. Love itself became the object of her love. She loved herself in love, she loved loving love, as love loves loving, and was able, in that way, to reconcile herself with a world that fell so short of what she would have hoped for. It was not the world that was the great and saving lie, but her willingness to make it beautiful and fair, to live a once-removed life, in a world once-removed from the one in which everyone else seemed to exit.”

Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

I read Everything is Illuminated over the summer and I fell a little bit in love, I think. I’d watched the movie months before, but only out of loyalty to Eugene Hutz (the frontman of the band Gogol Bordello and a surprisingly good actor). However, the book and the movie are vastly different — though the disparity is understandable, as the intricacies of Foer’s writing are hardly suited to be adapted to film.

And speaking of Foer’s writing, it’s totally beautiful. It’s simultaneously natural and carefully structured — which makes it even better when it’s read aloud, just so you know. It’s a little bit abstract, particularly the sample I chose, but I happen to love his brand of abstraction. It’s like being lead around in circles until I have to stop and think about what it is that I’m doing exactly.

The girl mentioned, Brod, has very different emotional capabilities than the world around her. She is intelligent, though her wit only serves to isolate her further. Her kind of sadness is profound and probably incurable, though she’s smart enough to know how to navigate through it all. The depth of her character is dizzying to the point that I still think about her sometimes. Brod is beautiful, in all her complexity, but I don’t know if I can ever fully understand her. I only ever see her clearly when I look at her through the lens of the chosen excerpt.

In sophomore year, I read The Kite Runner for my English class. Normally I dislike the books that teachers choose, but I loved this one. Khaled Hosseini wrote in a way that made everything flow and for the first time ever, I actually read ahead of what I was supposed to. For me, the most powerful line was at the very end when Amir says to Sohrab:

“For you, a thousand times over.”

Out of context it doesn’t seem like great writing at all. But here is some context. Sohrab is Hassan’s son, and Hassan was Amir’s best childhood friend, servant and half brother. Hassan ran kites for Amir always saying that he would do it “for you a thousand times over.” However one day Amir saw Hassan be raped and did nothing to help because he was too afraid. He drove Hassan away because he could not get over his guilt. He felt this debt for the rest of his life. Years later as an adult, Amir rescues Sohrab from an orphanage in Afghanistan and takes him to America. Sohrab has been abused and stays quiet until Amir teaches him how to fly a kite. They cut another kite and Amir asks if Sohrab would like him to run the kite. Sohrab nods and Amir says “for you a thousand times over.”

With the brief context, you can see how powerful the quote is. Amir is making up his debt to Hassan by rescuing his son from an abusive owner. Flying kites brings back images of Amir and Hassan when they were children and best friends. And by saying the quote, it is as if Amir has taken the role of Hassan, and is the servant now to Sohrab, even though he is much older than him. The quote brings the story full circle and to me, that’s what makes it the most powerful and a great one-line quote. It shows how much he cared for Hassan and shows how he is trying to make up for his debt by serving Hassan’s son. All of the humility, emotions and nostalgia in that one line make it a piece of great writing.