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Nov. 10, 2006
Illuminating common stories
New Yorker tackles difficult themes with wit, Yiddishkeit.
KATHARINE HAMER EDITOR
Jonathan Safran Foer never intended for his first novel to have
a Jewish theme – it just turned out that way. "I didn't
think I was going to write something that had any Jewish content
at all," he mused, in a recent interview with the Independent.
"I was very, very surprised when I ended up with the book that
I did write, because it is really Jewish by just about anybody's
definition."
The novel, Everything is Illuminated, went on to win the
Jewish Book Award and was turned into a feature film, released last
year. Along the way, it turned Foer – who is not yet 30 –
into a literary celebrity. His second novel, Extremely Loud and
Incredibly Close, was also met with widespread acclaim –
and its fair share of criticism, given that it centres around a
child whose father was killed at the World Trade Centre on Sept.
11.
Foer said he didn't make a conscious decision to have such cataclysmic
events (the protagonist of Everything is Illuminated is on
a mission to find out how his grandfather survived the Shoah) as
the starting points for his books.
"I didn't really intend it in either case," he said. "In
part, I just found it hard to get around them, I mean, being a Jew
who was raised in the way that I was, and being a New Yorker ...
I just found it hard not to write about them. It was just so central
to the way I grew up."
A number of Foer's family members perished in the Holocaust. In
fact, to begin with, he wasn't sure that Everything is Illuminated
would turn out to be fictional, as it began with a trip he himself
took to Ukraine to investigate his own grandfather's story. As a
result, the main character in Everything is Illuminated is
also called Jonathan Safran Foer – a quirk Foer said he found
oddest when the movie version of the book came out.
Despite the fact he doesn't feel the movie shared his authorial
vision, he isn't complaining: "God, you know, people showing
up at a movie set and all the cameras and make-up people and costume
in order to re-imagine something I wrote," he said. "I
think it's really exciting."
Foer, who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., is married to fellow writer Nicole
Krauss. The pair share a son, Sasha, a wayward dog, George, and
some stylistic similarities. Krauss's second novel, The History
of Love, also features characters whose lives were upturned
by the Holocaust.
Foer said it was "totally coincidental" that he ended
up with someone Jewish. "I think it's important," he said,
"but I also think, having to choose between the two, I would
actually choose love. I was lucky and didn't have to choose.
"If my son fell in love with somebody who wasn't Jewish, would
I feel like something was lost? Yes. Would I discourage him? No,
not for a second. I think there are also great advantages to spending
time with somebody who has a different upbringing; spending your
life with somebody who has a different upbringing. Whoever you end
up with, things are harder and easier because of it."
As for his own religious perspective, Foer describes himself as
"a Jew and an atheist." Still, he said, "I guess
I'm surprised in my own life also how that part of my upbringing
keeps coming to the surface or the ways that it comes to the surface.
I'm from a family that wasn't religious, but I did go to Hebrew
school and at some point, somehow or another, I did learn an awful
lot of Jewish stories, whether they're stories from the Old Testament
or the stories of Philip Roth. They're in me and I keep returning
to them. I'm a dad now, I have a kid – and I'm curious to see
how all of that will be expressed in me as a father."
Another thing that surprised him was the sort of following he developed
after Everything is Illuminated was published. "I realized
I was just wrong about who I thought was reading books," he
said. "I guess when I started to write, I thought that people
who would have strong opinions about my book - positive or negative
- would be people kind of like me; Jewish people in their 20s who
live in the northeast. And not only is that stupid, but it's actually
very ugly, as if what we really have in common are just the circumstances
of our lives. Books are like the antidote to that idea, not the
confirmation of it."
Foer will be interviewed by Hal Wake for the opening night of the
Cherie Smith JCC Jewish Book Festival, 7:30 p.m., Saturday, Nov.
18, at the Norman Rothstein Theatre. Advance tickets are $25. For
more information, visit www.jccgv.com.
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