Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

#562
Title: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Author: Jonathan Safran Foer
Publisher: Mariner Books
Year: 2006
368 pages

Spoilers. You've been warned.

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I first  read this as an audiobook, which clarifies the flow of the narrative but loses the graphic and typographic pastiche of the printed book, which I then skimmed. On the whole, I'd recommend the printed book since the pastiche parallels protagonist Oskar's book of "Stuff That Happened to Me" and other characters' letter- and journal-writing, uses typographic strategies to illuminate aspects of internal monologues and external dialogues, and uses images to underscore aspects of the text that are emotionally important to Oskar. Overall, the pastiche serves to give the reader/viewer a more immediate understanding that Oskar's world and patterns of thought are not entirely linguistic or linear, which is important because, like the protagonist of Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Oskar is not what you'd call neurotypical. Neither does he seem to be aspie, or schizophrenic, though he presents some aspects of each. The visual pastiche gives the reader a visceral door into Oskar's perceptual world, which contributes to the story's credibility and the reader's identification with him. For an added dimension, listen to the book while reading it in print, since telephone calls also figure prominently.

Like Foer's Everything Is Illuminated, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is less about its plot and more about grief--the great, huge, gasping, heart-wrenching grief of societal tragedy as well as the more personal astounded horror of individual loss. It's also about the ultimately inexplicable nature of Stuff That Happens To Us. Why, out of all people, was Oskar's father in the World Trade Center on September 11th? In contrast to Haddon's protagonist, Oskar's obsessive attempts to make sense of this mystery must fail. Oskar will never know if the pixelated falling man is his father, and in a way, this degree of specificity and closure, though it seems as if it will make the death more tolerable, is not useful or necessary. Oskar must emerge from the ultimately deflating search for his father with greater insight, maturity, and ability to tolerate the random and unknowable, not by filling his father's coffin with language (though he does so), but by sharing secrets and grief in meaningful human relationships. The final sequence of images, of the body flying up, is a poignant ending and holds the readers' hopes and wishes, for we, like Oskar, had to live through this loss.

RIP Jonathan Randall, d. 9/11/01.