Here are some prompts you might want to respond to for Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close:
- What do you think about Oskar’s voice? Do you find it convincing/authentic? Several early reviewers praised the voice as the compelling driver of the novel. Or do you find it inauthentic and annoying, as some other early reviewers have complained? What are the advantages, disadvantages in choosing a child narrator?
- Discuss the back story in the novel, the chapters set in Dresden. Why are they included? What do they add? How well do you think this structural choice works? Do you find one narrative thread in the story inherently more interesting than the other?
- Talk about the theme of language and silence in the novel. You might look at Thomas, Sr., for instance, and the words he has lost. What does it mean when he says that “every book…is the balance of YES and NO” (17)?
- Discuss the use of images, blank space, etc. in the novel. How well do you think these visual elements work? Why do you think Foer chose this format?
- This novel contains numerous letters, texts, and life stories embedded within the story that Oskar is telling. How do these connect? Why do you think Foer chooses to include so many first-person narratives within the narrative?
I went back and forth on Oskar’s voice throughout my reading of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. At points I was pretty annoyed by it and found it to be a little gimmicky. Foer almost comes off a little like an off-brand David Foster Wallace. It definitely feels like a book from a specific time in contemporary American literature. But at the same time, Oskar’s tone began to grow on me. There are some incredibly funny moments in this novel. For instance, when he presents the survivor’s account from Hiroshima. The structure of that scene is perfect. Eventually, I began to accept the eccentricities of Oskar’s voice. But it took time and I don’t know if it was entirely successful.
What I noticed was the recurring images of pieces and the role they can play in larger events. Did anyone else notice this? I took notes on a few examples: the individual nails Mr. Black drives into his bed that eventually make it incredibly heavy, the comment the one guy makes about how the old sheds were broken by the falling leaves, and the allegory Thomas gives Oskar about meaning in regards to moving a single grain of sand in the desert. I am sure there are others. There seems to be something in the idea of pieces adding to the whole of a larger object.
I agree with Michael – the child voice isn’t always working for me. When I see a child protagonist in first person narrative, I’m expecting a fully honest depiction of children’s views: the innocence (or lack-of), the originality and the limits, which is extremely hard to pull off, not to mention that this child’s voice (and the self-awareness to record that voice) is burdened with the personal and collective trauma of 911. This is definitely not something to be gimmicky about. There are times in the novel when the child’s voice wore thin and the author’s intentions came through – those moments made me cringe.
Having said that, Jonathan Foer wrote some brilliant scenes in that child’s voice too. My favorite one is the fight between “me” and Mother, when “I” told mom that “if I could’ve chosen, I would’ve chosen you.” The way the fight got quickly escalated, the pendulum of mixed emotions swinging back and forth felt extremely real, and I thought he did a great job conveying the desperation in a child’s attempt to cope with loss. I cracked up every time the narrator cussed with words like shitake and suckotosh cocker spaniel too. That was a touch of genius.
I appreciated the device of certain repeated de-familiarized phrases throughout the book: “I got heavy boots”, “I bruised myself” – they added to the edge of the child’s voice and served as emotional cues for the reader.
It was very interesting reading the storyline of Grandma and Thomas, when Slaughter House Five is still fresh in my mind. I have mixed feelings about this story line: While I can see the bleak wasteland that lay in people’s mind after trauma, and the loss of voice, both literally and figuratively made sense to me, I couldn’t help feeling that their story is a mime show – full of gestures that point to possibilities that were left under-developed. I never felt that I know these people personally. Their daily struggles behind closed doors still felt performative, as if to prove a point by the author. I would have appreciated the trauma victims fleshed out more in this story line.
I found the story threads about the Grandfather interesting. It was hard to follow at first, but understanding the lineage was important to the story. I felt Oskar is an eccentric kid. He says exactly what he is thinking and has not mastered his filter yet. Thomas Sr appears to be just as eccentric although I never fully understand how a person can lose his words. I appreciated the story that developed between Oskar’s Grandma and Thomas Sr even though it seemed odd how their relationship transpired. It makes me laugh thinking about their something and nothing boundaries in their apartment, but the relationship has to function in a way that works for them.
I enjoyed the novel and the structure was back and forth with stories from the past and present, but it all came together in the end. I believe the overall theme of the story is grief. People of the past and present have a way of grieving and I am glad that Oskar and his family are finally able to come together and grieve their loss from 9/11.
Like Kangkang and Mike, I paid attention to the childlike style of Oskar’s narration. True to the form of child storytellers, Oskar has a surplus of winding dialogue with other characters and repeats key scenes (like the Steven Hawking letter). While I was tempted to be frustrated at the lack of concision, I reminded myself of Oskar’s limitations as a narrator. The scenes where he says he did what he actually wanted to do were effective at conveying the sudden intensity of his anger. The style reminded me of Mark Haddon’s Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003) which also contains detective fiction elements told from a boy’s perspective. Both these novels appeal to grade-school readers who are closer to the narrators’ ages. I could not help thinking that Foer wrote this novel for kids who lost a parent during the attack.
Oskar’s voice is convincing, but I would not go as far as to call it authentic since the book was not actually written by a child. What keeps it from being gimmicky is its insistence on raw emotions. There is quality comic relief, and there is genuine heartbreak. Personally, I like Oskar more than his narration. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close has a place at the literary table, but binge reading works like this one would get old quickly.
One of my biggest issues with the novel was the use of Oskar’s voice in the novel. While at points it seemed authentic and true to that of a nine year old boy, for most of the novel it felt artificial and gimmicky. It felt, to me, like a grown man trying to be a nine year old boy. This broke the immersion for me for the whole novel. I agree with Michael about the “this feels like a book from a specific time in contemporary American literature” to me. I had to read many contemporary American novels in the past that have been written with a child protagonist (i.e. The Book Thief, the Percy Jackson series, We the Animals, etc.). I think it would have worked in this book’s favor if it was written in third person for Oskar, much like in The Book Thief.
Along with this, another thing that kept on coming back to my mind was the release date of the novel in relation to the events of 911. It seemed like a forced cash grab to profit of a terrible event that was still fresh in the minds of everyone. It reminded me a lot of the recent Locked Down film with Anne Hathaway and Chiwetel Ejiofor which followed a couple execute a heist during the COVID-19 pandemic (this film was released less than a year after initial lockdowns began). Both of these works seemed to stem from playing off an incredibly real and tragic event while the wounds of said event were very fresh. While I think it is important to document the initial reactions to a tragic event through art, there are many other ways to do so with care other than through gimmick and bad taste.
I had such a strange experience reading this novel because there were times I found myself rolling my eyes, getting annoyed at the author’s overly constructed text and wrought points, and telling myself I would never think of this book after we talked about it; and yet, I also had the same experience of being moved and pulled into the emotions of the text, compelled to engage with structure and inspect it for all it is worth. I lived two lives in the text: one where I hated the book and one where I loved it. The voice of Oskar like Michael and Kangkang have said, is at times irritating and almost painful (I am thinking of the scene with the divorced woman whom he asks to kiss and who later asks him to kiss her which was so bizarre) but this child voice also allowed for tender moments like the use of heavy boots and the heartbreaking revelation of what he did with the phone. The grandfather’s section surprised me and I found its emphasis on language and losing it was odd and intriguing. And the grandmother’s section to balance and contradict the grandfather’s created a commentary on accounts of trauma and perspective. But the grandparent’s stories felt like they were a part of another story. The story feels somehow underdone and overwrought. Why include the grandparents? Why make the father’s death a part of 9/11 at all? I have so many questions about the book’s construction because it feels thought out and thrown together.
I found myself conflicted over the voice of Oskar — like others have said, I frequently felt like the voice was gimmicky, however I do understand why Foer chose Oskar as the voice in this first person narrative. Like Kangkang said, it is difficult to successfully write a narrative from the voice of a child and to ensure that voice’s authenticity while remaining compelling. I quite enjoy Jesmyn Ward’s tactic of introducing voices with varying chapters and believe that could have perhaps been helpful with the narrative of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.
In my opinion, Foer’s use of structure and format is the most masterful aspect of this novel. I am excited to move into our 9/11 literature and I think that this novel is a great starting point. Foer’s inclusion of various forms of media speaks to the historical divide between O’Brien’s Vietnam War and the experiences of 9/11 and its impact on American society. It is interesting to note the differences between Foer’s narrator and the masculine narrators of Hemingway, Vonnegut, and O’Brien and the contrasting structure of these novels. Foer’s inclusion of various letters, texts, and life stories introduces the magnitude of the effects of 9/11 on American communities, which is why the author includes so many first-person narratives within the novel.