Category Archives: Foer

The book is becoming more and more repetitive as i am reading further into it.  The grandparent’s stories are boring and the search to find the lock that the key is for is getting longer than i see necessary.  The fact of the matter is Oskar is trying to keep the memory of his Dad alive by searching for the lock that his key belongs to.  The key symbols a secret that Oskar’s parents were keeping from him, could also be his father keeping the secret.

On the other hand, Oskar, the nine year old boy living in Manhattan, is traveling all throughout the city at first by himself, but then with a older man that lives in his apartment building.  Where is his mom or grandma while this is going on? Has he mastered the art of lying that well that he doesn’t even have to try? He may be a mature nine year old but the other people in the world who are less mature could seriously hurt him.  This is a problem that needs to be addressed, he can not roam around the city alone, without his mother knowing.

There was also an excessive amount of time jumping going on in this part of the novel.  The jumps from present to past are abrupt and sometimes can be hard to follow if you skip a line or are skimming through.  This is definitely not something that would interest me on a reading basis.

The novel Extremely loud and Incredibly close is not something i would pick out of a bookstore and read.  This is novel is about a nine-year old boy that travels all over the five boroughs, that is just not logical.  I come from a home where crossing a two lane street is dangerous, let alone wandering around knocking on peoples doors.  While reading the novel, i don’t perceive Oskar as a nine year old, he seems to me like a 18 year old, based on the way he speaks, acts, and thinks.  The story seams too far-fetched, i know it is based on a real event, however the story of Oskar is unrealistic.  If this was in real life i think i would have to call social services on his mother.  How does she not care about where he is or what he is doing? HE IS NINE YEARS OLD!

I enjoy reading fiction and non-fiction, but i like a book that makes you think, this novel i felt was very repetitive.  I haven’t finished it but i am 2/3 through and i can say he must have listened to the same messages about six times.  There is a mystery involved, where the key is for, it does cause you to think about what it is for but it is a never ending search for the lock.  He goes to random peoples homes, walking throughout horrible neighborhoods and meeting some creepy people.

i am interested in seeing what happens as the novel progresses, however. Since i am interested in knowing what exactly that key is for.

Admittedly when I started reading Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close I didn’t expect much out of the book but after getting into it im starting to get a little interested in reading more. Oskars personality and quirks makes the reading more colorful and makes me wanna keep reading just to see what other crazy and hilarious things he would do next. The book made it hard to keep up since it jumped from one story to the next but all the little stories of him as a kid and his little adventures reminds me of how much being a kid and being young is so much fun and filled with things to be seen and learn.

The introduction of the mysterious key does a great job of getting readers to keep reading but I feel like the main purpose and theme of the book isn’t for him to find what the key unlocks. I feel like the key is more of a metaphor or a catalysis that is supposed to lead him on a journey to get over the death of his father and allow him to grow and mature further.

How I imagine Oskar

That also makes a good point because even though Oskar sets out to find the answers to his questions on his own, it was his interaction with other people and strangers that really help him to find what he was looking for. The best way for someone to get over a loss is to surround themselves with people and talk about it so making himself tell the total truth to all the people with the name Black really helped him.

When I read books, I simultaneously create images in my head of how I think scenes would play out. Reading this book, I was in awe most of the time. Reading Oskar’s story and his thoughts just made me think of a little curious and precocious boy, sort of like my little brother, wandering around the big city, striving to grasp as much knowledge as he can about an event that changed his life forever.

I found it amazing how Foer took us on a journey along with Oskar, and inside his mind to see how this small child took on the immense load of the death of a parent and instead of mourning, turned it into a type of scavenger hunt to find one item which could potentially answer all his questions about that one horrible day.

I really enjoyed Foer’s writing style, and even though the incorporation of stories from the past (such as from Oskar’s father & grandfather) confused me, the sketches and pictures within the novel captivated my attention. This book was definitely one of a kind, and I’m glad I read it, and I’m finding it easy to reread it.

Although a couple of my favorite quotes from this novel appear later in the reading, some parts I liked specifically from pages 1-75 were:

-Oskar’s mentioning of his “heavy boots”. Frankly, I thought this was so mature of him to say because honestly, what nine-year old can fully comprehend what that means ? I think Oskar created a perfect definition of what grief or sadness could feel like, a definition even adults could use. This phrase stuck with me for that reason.

-I also enjoyed the plethora of sketches throughout the reading, because they help identify Oskar’s thoughts and just make the novel that much more unique.

Overall, I thought the novel was a very different take on the 9/11 tragedy, because its not necessarily all grief, but it also amazes you with the undying curiosity of this unbelievably exceptional nine-year old.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXnA9FjvLSU

-As for the link I posted, its pretty long (about an hour) but I think it really relates to the novel. Not only because it features the famous “falling man” that is mentioned throughout the novel, but it provides some interesting insight about that particular photograph, like how it caused controversy and was requested to be removed from papers because it wasn’t an image people wanted to see. However, I agree with others in this film on how the picture is actually worth sharing. Although a horrible sight, it does provide truth as to what happened within the towers that day, as well as show a non-gory, somewhat graceful and peaceful image about the horror of 9/11.

From an interview with Foer:

“Q: How did the idea for the novel originate?

JSF:  To make a long story short, I’ve tried to follow my instincts. I’ve tried to write the book I would want to read, rather than the book I would want to write. I’ve tried never to ask if something was smart, but instead if it felt genuine. A set of themes rose to the surface: silence, invention, anxiety, naiveté, absence, the difficulty of expressing love, war… I felt I couldn’t push them down, and I chose not to try to. Voices became pronounced. Some characters became vivid, others vanished. A plot… happened. If it sounds inefficient, I’ve described it properly. I cannot imagine how I could have been less efficient. But maybe inefficiency is the point. One can use a map and drive to a destination. Or one can follow the most interesting, beautiful roads—trusting oneself, trusting the car, and trusting the logic of the pavement—and end up where you couldn’t have realized you wanted to be until you got there. Writing, for me, is about following roads. And that intuitive, wandering approach explains not only why this book is so far from where I started, but why I feel it so personally, so viscerally, and so, well, loudly and closely.”

After reading your responses so far, I feel particularly interested in how Foer categorizes his own writing process as “following roads.” I wonder if this is what makes the book a bit tricky for some of you? If you, as writers, were to follow your own roads, what would they look like?

Another excerpt from the same interview–

“Q: The form of the book is quite new, particularly the use of photography.  How did that come about?
JSF: I was browsing the Internet one night—allowing links to carry me farther and farther from the news sites I normally visit—and was shocked by the breadth and graphicness of the images I quite unintentionally came across. I don’t mean that in a naïve or prudish way. There’s something exhilarating about being so close to everything at once, something beautiful. But there’s something incredibly lonely about it, too. And ugly. It made me think about children, and the visual environment in which they are now developing. What must it be like, as a nine year old, to see beheadings, and home videos of famous actresses having sex, and dogs fighting, and babies being born, and people jumping from planes with broken parachutes? Some of the images in the novel pertain directly to Oskar’s story, but many are there to provide context to his life, and give the reader access to a different kind of sympathy. That is, the photographs show not only what Oskar’s eyes might see, they show his eyes.”

Do you think that the form of the novel matches its content? Do you feel like you are able to see what Oskar’s eyes might see?

Author Jonathan Safran Foer tells of a story of a young child named Oskar Schell. Reading from a perspective from a nine year old child provided me with a new type of reading experience. I have yet found a novel as unique as this one, which contains actual photos and random drawings.

In the beginning, I was confused of how intellectual Oskar was for a nine year old. However, I thought this novel would not have been so interesting if it was not for Oskar’s amazing curiosity. After losing his father in the tragic 9/11 attack, instead of mourning his father’s sudden death, Oskar goes on an adventure. While I was reading the scene where Oskar listens to the last voicemails his father left, I felt utterly sad. Since Oskar did not portray his sadness as any other child would, I felt the need to feel sorry for him. This tragedy however, causes Oskar to embark in a new journey in life to find out and unravel who he is and his family.

Oskar’s continuous curiosity throughout the novel reminded me of the cartoon Curious George. Like Curious George, Oskar goes around the city looking for clues for the mysterious key that his father had left him.

http://www.911memorial.org/

Oskar. That’s the name of the intruiging nine year old boy who narrates this novel, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer.

As the book begins, one would perceive that Oskar (whose name isn’t given until further on in the story) is a person of mature age, possibly in their mid-twenties or so. He uses the vocabulary of a much older person than he is; his level of vocabulary at age nine matches that of someone in their early high school years. Although, there is a unique twist to Oskar. One would expect someone who talks like a twenty year old to act like one, but that’s just it; he doesn’t.

Oskar holds a strong curiosity, just as any other nine year old boy would have. Through this, you can see how young he really is, as he reveals his curiosity throughout his acts later on. He asks constant questions about things he hears and sees as the story unfolds, yet he fluently uses words that I only began to learn in middle school. He was also very clingy towards his father, something you would expect in a child. His identity is very complicated, it’s as if he’s neither a child nor an adult. This gets me wondering, are there actually any children in the real world similar to Oskar?

Oscar is a 8 year old child but has a mind of a 40 year old. His mature thought has led him to a new journey that may possibly help him discover the truth about his father. The tragedy of 9/11 impacted many peoples lives such as Oscar. The beginning of this novel caused me to wonder why it started at a cemetery.

I know that Oscar is an intellectual person because of the conversations he held with his mom on the way to the cemetery. Just by reading the first 75 pages, it convinced me that Oscar would be an adventurous, curious over achiever. While reading the novel, the significance of the cemetery began to reveal itself. Oscars dad was lost in the World Trade Center incident on 9/11. Oscar shows that he was skeptical from the beginning of the novel so i would assume that the rest of the novel will allow Oscar to find the answers he is looking for.

In the start this book was extremely confusing for me i literally felt like it was a bunch of puzzle pieces which i had to put together. It was just a bunch of stories that he listed from his fathers voice to his Sensei to the Limousine. Its one of those books where you don’t understand anything till you read the whole thing which makes it a nice book. The fact that hes a little kid confuses me because how can he be very “mature” at that age which makes you think something happened in his early childhood. The chapters also switch character which makes it even more confusing. I feel like I’m lost in a world of confusion where nothing makes sense.

I feel like the book should be some where on this list.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/6270964/The-50-most-confusing-things-in-the-world.html

Reading this book a second time through revealed a lot of the mysteries and reasons for character development that only gets answer at the end of the book. I realized that a lot of my opinions about Oskar and his family have stayed the same. The key thing about Oskar that I found interesting was that he kept track of all his disappointments and lies. What was even more interesting to me was the fact he eventually lost count because of how many he had only a day into his journey and I feel this was Foer’s way of depicting life as unbiased. Clearly Oskar is only 9 but acts as most of us young adults would do now and life is unbiased, just as the 9/11 attack affected everyone who lost someone the same way regardless of age and gender, to his age or innocence throwing disappointments and lies his ways.

I still feel a bit of sorrow and pity for the Grandpa when I hear about his story. The first two narrations of his letters are very confusing to the reader and I feel that he is not the narrator during these sections. I feel it is Oskar reading these letters. If this is the case then it makes sense for the first couple of transition between stories to confuse the reader because Oskar never really knew anything about his grandpa and would be confused by the contexts of these letters. A confused narrator would certainly need to confusing story and that’s a journey that both the reader and Oskar make together in learning about his past.

I bet Oskar’s grandma wishes she could do this.