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A review by thelizabeth
Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
3.0
I'm a crabby old woman, and the reason I know that is because I really just hate a show-off. I want to tell them to go sit down and be polite, for goodness sake. Other writers restrain themselves!
Now, I love big writing, I love new writing. I love language that goes somewhere, that tries to say things in ways that aren't normal and don't make sense. Whatever this is, though, I don't love this. It makes me need deep breaths of patience. I don't like the words precious or cloying to describe it, but until there are some others, that's what I have to call the thing I don't like about it.
Some of the novel's unusual elements interested me. The level of meta to the writing and characters is certainly odd. This is one of those books that is also a "fictional novel," where its own character is writing it in the story. Here, we are theoretically reading the result of a co-authorship between the characters Jonathan and Alex. In addition to reading what they've written for the book, we read Alex's letters to Jonathan about the writing process. It's immensely strange the way Jonathan is a meta-character in the novel. We never hear him speak as this character, we only see Alex's rendition (both in his chapters and his letters). In his letters, Alex is allowed to anticipate readers' questions by asking about the moral ambiguity of fictionalizing real events, and also to complain about the weirder parts of Jonathan's book, and ask why they are so weird. Neither Jonathan, Alex's nor ours, ever answers.
It's partly for this reason (him being the truer and more down-to-earth fictional storyteller) that I love Alex's chapters and don't love Jonathan's chapters. Partly this is the nature of the story he gets to tell — the improbable trip through the Ukranian countryside with its questionable outcome. But this is also due to the "real" Jonathan's work, the author's: Alex's voice is an incredible prize, and makes the book worth reading no matter what. His broken-English vocabulary is just adorable and so fun to read. He's kind and beautiful and fucking hilarious, all even when he is ignorant or selfish. He grows and learns things and considers people more than anyone else in the book. As a reader you feel he is on your side, whereas you feel Jonathan is trying to teach you something. Or preach you something.
I feel that in another author's hands, I really should have liked Jonathan's historical chapters very well. They are based on what was real and written as folklore, magical realism. That's a beautiful experiment. But this is unfortunately the part of the book where you'll learn whether or not you like Foer as an author, and I didn't love him. He's twee and messy. He wants to put indelicate moments in your face with the austerity of religion. A virgin was raped at the moment her father died; she loved her husband so much she turned herself toward his beatings; someone ejaculated at this moment that caused the end of the world; 132 women jerked off with the dead hand of his grandfather. Maybe, in someone else's book, but maybe not, here.
And don't yell at me? But I had hoped for answers to the story. It's a story about looking for answers from the past, and in the characters' experience they are unable to find them, a reluctantly realistic outcome. I understand there's meaning in this promise going unfulfilled, but I missed it anyway. We are sidetracked into the discovery that Alex's and Jonathan's grandfathers were from the same place, which is quite meaningful, but not the same.
Strangely, I guess, I want to talk about the movie at this point? Which is a movie I really like, by the way. It portrays only Alex's part of the novel, and really well. Like lots of books-to-films, though, it makes some interesting elisions in order to tell a less ambiguous story. And I felt I had to draw my own conclusions about a few things in the backstory that are presented really differently in the movie, and I wanted to think about that out loud.
In the book, we know more: The woman they meet is Lista, whom Jonathan's grandfather was (of course) lovers with. She knows Alex's grandfather's story of his betraying his friend. We know that Jonathan's grandfather married someone who was not Augustine. (Who actually was Augustine?) When Lista tells her terrible story in the field, she tells a longer version in which her "sister," after her unborn baby is shot (in a far more gruesome way), survived, and collected all the belongings in the village, which are the things in the boxes that Lista lives with. She refuses to say what happened to her sister afterward, or what happened to her so that she survived that attack. Later, we're told she is keeping a dead baby. She is altogether less sweet and sane. I concluded that her story about her sister was about herself.
By the way, I love Eugene Hutz in that movie, so much, so much. Alex is no one else. I would give him 68 Oscars. (What am I saying, 69.) 11 Oscars for the dog, also.
What this book raises, though, is of such great value that it isn't important whether its style delivers your favorite book ever or not. I gave this copy of the book to my sister some years ago after she'd read it from the library and said that she had so many things to decide about it, she had to read it again. I'm glad I finally did too, because I want to keep answering the questions — Alex's, as much as Jonathan's.
Now, I love big writing, I love new writing. I love language that goes somewhere, that tries to say things in ways that aren't normal and don't make sense. Whatever this is, though, I don't love this. It makes me need deep breaths of patience. I don't like the words precious or cloying to describe it, but until there are some others, that's what I have to call the thing I don't like about it.
Some of the novel's unusual elements interested me. The level of meta to the writing and characters is certainly odd. This is one of those books that is also a "fictional novel," where its own character is writing it in the story. Here, we are theoretically reading the result of a co-authorship between the characters Jonathan and Alex. In addition to reading what they've written for the book, we read Alex's letters to Jonathan about the writing process. It's immensely strange the way Jonathan is a meta-character in the novel. We never hear him speak as this character, we only see Alex's rendition (both in his chapters and his letters). In his letters, Alex is allowed to anticipate readers' questions by asking about the moral ambiguity of fictionalizing real events, and also to complain about the weirder parts of Jonathan's book, and ask why they are so weird. Neither Jonathan, Alex's nor ours, ever answers.
It's partly for this reason (him being the truer and more down-to-earth fictional storyteller) that I love Alex's chapters and don't love Jonathan's chapters. Partly this is the nature of the story he gets to tell — the improbable trip through the Ukranian countryside with its questionable outcome. But this is also due to the "real" Jonathan's work, the author's: Alex's voice is an incredible prize, and makes the book worth reading no matter what. His broken-English vocabulary is just adorable and so fun to read. He's kind and beautiful and fucking hilarious, all even when he is ignorant or selfish. He grows and learns things and considers people more than anyone else in the book. As a reader you feel he is on your side, whereas you feel Jonathan is trying to teach you something. Or preach you something.
I feel that in another author's hands, I really should have liked Jonathan's historical chapters very well. They are based on what was real and written as folklore, magical realism. That's a beautiful experiment. But this is unfortunately the part of the book where you'll learn whether or not you like Foer as an author, and I didn't love him. He's twee and messy. He wants to put indelicate moments in your face with the austerity of religion. A virgin was raped at the moment her father died; she loved her husband so much she turned herself toward his beatings; someone ejaculated at this moment that caused the end of the world; 132 women jerked off with the dead hand of his grandfather. Maybe, in someone else's book, but maybe not, here.
And don't yell at me? But I had hoped for answers to the story. It's a story about looking for answers from the past, and in the characters' experience they are unable to find them, a reluctantly realistic outcome.
Spoiler
But I had expected that the point of Jonathan writing his history, up to the life of his grandfather whom he went to such lengths to seek answers about, was that it would include the answer. That we'd learn the past offered its answers only to the reader, perhaps, or something more ambiguous like the truth was what Jonathan decided the truth was, and he had decided something. But we never do learn how his grandfather escaped the Nazis and made it to America. We go up to the very day, and we still don't know how.Strangely, I guess, I want to talk about the movie at this point? Which is a movie I really like, by the way. It portrays only Alex's part of the novel, and really well. Like lots of books-to-films, though, it makes some interesting elisions in order to tell a less ambiguous story. And I felt I had to draw my own conclusions about a few things in the backstory that are presented really differently in the movie, and I wanted to think about that out loud.
Spoiler
In the movie, the woman they meet identifies herself clearly as Augustine's sister, and Augustine as having been Jonathan's grandfather's first wife who was killed in the attack. She recognizes Alex's grandfather as a character mentioned in the book, but not the same person he is in the book, and he is also definitely "exposed" as having been a Jew. (Therefore, because it's entirely made up, the story of his survival that is shown for him in the movie also makes almost no sense.) She tells her terrible story in the field, and that her sister's unborn baby was shot, and she died.In the book, we know more: The woman they meet is Lista, whom Jonathan's grandfather was (of course) lovers with. She knows Alex's grandfather's story of his betraying his friend. We know that Jonathan's grandfather married someone who was not Augustine. (Who actually was Augustine?) When Lista tells her terrible story in the field, she tells a longer version in which her "sister," after her unborn baby is shot (in a far more gruesome way), survived, and collected all the belongings in the village, which are the things in the boxes that Lista lives with. She refuses to say what happened to her sister afterward, or what happened to her so that she survived that attack. Later, we're told she is keeping a dead baby. She is altogether less sweet and sane. I concluded that her story about her sister was about herself.
By the way, I love Eugene Hutz in that movie, so much, so much. Alex is no one else. I would give him 68 Oscars. (What am I saying, 69.) 11 Oscars for the dog, also.
What this book raises, though, is of such great value that it isn't important whether its style delivers your favorite book ever or not. I gave this copy of the book to my sister some years ago after she'd read it from the library and said that she had so many things to decide about it, she had to read it again. I'm glad I finally did too, because I want to keep answering the questions — Alex's, as much as Jonathan's.