Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

First of all, the first time I read this book was two or three years ago.  I wasn't that impressed.  I'd like to go back to sixteen (or fifteen?)-year-old me and ask what the hell was wrong with me.  Then again, the first two times I read Everything is Illuminated, I was unimpressed.  Can you believe it?  But then the third time I read it hit me, all of a sudden and just like that.  Same for this book.

Like Everything is Illuminated, this story is told through three different people--Oskar Schell, Thomas Schell SR, and Oskar's grandmother.  First of all, there is Oskar, whose father died on 9/11 two years before, when Oskar was (I believe) six (or seven?).  He has found a key in a blue vase hidden away in his father's closet, untouched--Mrs Schell has not touched or moved any of the things in his closet, it seems.  Anyways, he finds the key in an envelope and it has Black written upon it.  He then decides to find every person with that name in the city in the hopes that one of them knows what it unlocks and knew his father.  Secondly there is Oskar's grandmother.  She tells the story of her early life to her immigration to America.  Her immigration is described, she find the man who was to marry her sister (her sister was killed in the bombing of Dresden) and marries him.  She describes their courtship and marriage, and the eventual failure (or perhaps not) of their marriage.  Thomas Schell SR is Oskar's grandfather, who left before Oskar's father was even born.  His story is told through letters addressed to Thomas that were never actually sent.  Eventually he comes back, and appears in the story and meets Oskar, though Oskar doesn't realize until later that Thomas Schell SR is his grandfather.  So... let's start!

So the book is peppered with photographs.  The very first thing in it is a picture of a doorknob and the surrounding door.  It's got an old-fashioned keyhole--I don't know if this was the intent of Foer, but it reminds me of that quote, "People who look through keyholes are apt to get the idea that most things are keyhole shaped".  It seems appropriate for the book.

"What about a teakettle?" (1).  That's how book starts.  It's so perfect and simple, but it's asking everything.

I love that instead of using the cliche of his boots feeling like lead or his feet feeling like lead when he's upset or sad he says that he has heavy boots or that he's getting heavy boots.

So on the way to the service for Oskar's father (it's a flashback) Oskar talks to the limousine driver--they go in a limousine on the way there--and he comes up with an idea: "'Now that I'm thinking about it... they could make an incredibly long limousine that had its backseat at your mom's VJ and its front seat at your mausoleum, and it would be as long as your life.'  Gerald said, 'Yeah, but if everyone lived like that, no one would ever meet anyone, right?'  I said, 'So?'" (5).

"A few weeks after the worst day, I started writing lots of letters.  I don't know why, but writing was the only thing that made my boots lighter.  One weird thing is that instead of using normal stamps, I used stamps from my collection, including valuable ones, which sometimes made me wonder if what I was really doing was trying to get rid of things" (11).  (The worst day is of course 9/11.  The book is also peppered with letters from famous folk like Stephen Hawking and Jane Goodall and, most of all, Ringo Starr.  I marked the page of Ringo's letter too.  I don't know if Foer just made the letter up himself, but I'd like to think that it's a bona fide letter for Ringo Starr.  That would be so cool!)

"'Well, what I don't get is why do we exist?  I don't mean how, but why.'  I watched the fireflies of his thoughts orbit his head.  He said, 'We exist because we exist.'  'What the?'  'We could imagine all sorts of universes unlike this one, but this is the one that happened'" (13).  This is Oskar talking to his father, pre-death, obviously.  This book obviously slants the father (I have to say it like that, I know that's harsh, but it would be foolish to deny a slant when the book has parts written from the son's point of view about his father), but I see Thomas Schell (JR, Oskar's father) as an Atticus Finch-type.  I mean, not as good, that's Atticus Finch we're talking about, but still, the closest possible.

Thomas Schell SR's first letter talks about why he does not speak.  The ability just kind of disappeared over time thanks to grief--the first word he lost was the name Anna, the girl he was to marry and Oskar's

"I'd experienced joy, but not nearly enough, could there be enough?  The end of suffering does not justify the suffering, and so there is no end to suffering, what a mess I am, I thought, what a fool, how foolish and narrow, how worthless, how pinched and pathetic, how helpless" (33).  Thomas SR still.

"'We're useful now, but soon we'll be interesting'" (39).  Oskar goes to a locksmith to show him the key.  Because electronics are coming more and more into play, soon traditional keys are going to be more of an eccentricity than anything else--the locksmith says this bit.  I love that line.  I went so far as to underline it in the book.  There's something so lovely about it, and it's got something higher than what it signifies, but I just can't seem to wrap my head around it.

"'Why do beautiful songs make you sad?'  'Because they aren't true.'  'Never?'  'Nothing is beautiful and true'" (43).  For some reason I feel like the old woman of Trachimbrod (whose name I can never seem to remember) says something like this, but I seem to be incorrect...

On page fifty-six there's a diagram of an 'intrepid flyer' paper airplane.  I guess it doesn't mean much in relation to this book--I mean it does, that's why it's in here, but my note on it refers more to Chuck Palahniuk's book Survivor.  The edition I have is all white, but for a drawing of a plane from above and there are roses or flowers and curlicues about it (or something alone those lines, I don't have it exactly on hand) and the title/author, et cetera.  But the edition I see all the time now is all red with big sort of blocky black letters with a curious line design.  It's the folding instructions for a paper airplane!  Ah-ha!  ...Yeeeeep...

"'It probably gets pretty lonely to be Grandma, don't you think?'  I told her, 'It probably gets pretty lonely to be anyone'" (69).  Thomas Schell SR finds his ex-wife after he reads that his son died in the paper, and has been living with her ever since, even though neither Oskar nor his mother see him until the book's close-to conclusion.  Oskar's grandmother just refers to him as "the renter" as well--anyways, Oskar's mother imagines that it's just an imaginary friend--because the Grandma is lonely.

"I hope that one day you will have the experience of doing something you do not understand for someone you love" (76).

Oskar's grandmother is writing about her younger life: "[My schoolmate Mary] loved to jump on her bed.  She jumped on her bed for so many years that one afternoon, while I watched her jump, the seams burst.  Feathers filled the small room.  Our laughter kept the feathers in the air.  I thought about birds.  Could they fly if there wasn't someone, somewhere, laughing?" (78).

So, one of the Mrs Blacks that Oskar meets has a picture of an elephant.  She tells Oskar about a study that was done on the elephants' memories--they'd record a call and play it back to see if the elephants could remember the calls, and remember they did.  "'What's really fascinating is that she'd play the call of a dead elephant to its family members.'  'And?'  'They remembered... They approached the speaker.'  'I wonder what they were feeling... When they heard the calls of their dead, was it with love that they approached the jeep?  Or fear?  Or anger?'  'I don't remember'" (96).  I wonder.  I wonder what that would be like.  I feel like it would be cruel.  I feel like they'd hope against hope.  Maybe that's too romantic--Oskar says that they were probably just confused.  Though that's logical, I'd like to think that they remembered and felt hope and love and all of that--confusion too, but beyond just animal confusion.

"'Humans are the only animal that blushes, laughs, has religion, wages war, and kisses with lips.  So in a way, the more you kiss with lips, the more human you are'" (99).

"Sometimes I wondered if she cried when no one was looking" (100).

Oskar's grandmother was pretending to be a monster once when he was littler, and he fell and cut his lip on a table and needed a stitch or two--"'You see, I was pretending to be a monster, and I became a monster'" (101).

"Only a few months into our marriage, we started marking off areas in the apartment as 'Nothing Places,' in which one could be assured of complete privacy, we agreed that we never would look at the marked-off zones, that they would be nonexistent territories in the apartment in which one could temporarily cease to exist" (110).  Later, Thomas SR remembers being on a Something "island" (because eventually the apartment became just a place of Nothings) and thinking "'How did I get here... and how can I get back?'" (111).  But I like this idea.  I think everybody needs these places.  I think everybody has these places, even if they're not aware of it.  I tend to think of my basement as my Nothing place (Dante is privy to it, of course), and the floor of my bedroom too.  There are certain spaces you expect to be nothing places, even if you haven't given them quite that name, I'm sure.  Just think about it.

"Literature was the only religion her father practiced" (114).  Thomas SR is describing Oskar's grandmother and Anna's father.  Thomas also mentions that when a book fell on the ground the father would kiss it--one of the men shot by Nazis in Everything is Illuminated had this same trait.  I believe this is the man who refused to spit on the Torah even when there was a gun at his daughters' heads--but I don't remember exactly.

"I hated myself for going, why couldn't I be the kind of person that stays?" (114).  Still Thomas SR.

"'So little happens,' she said, 'and I'm so good at remembering'" (130).  Oskar's grandmother said this.

"I'm sorry for my inability to let the unimportant things go, for my inability to hold on to the important things" (132).  All of Thomas SR's letters are addressed to his son--this must refer to Anna.  She is dead and gone, and thus 'unimportant', at least in comparison to his wife and his son--and because he leaves them he cannot hold onto them.  I guess that hardly needs an explanation, but please humour me.

"I thought about the unfinished scarf, and the rock she carried across Broadway, and how she had lived so much life but still needed imaginary friends, and the one thousand thumb wars" (144).  Oskar has not met the renter--his grandfather--at this point, obviously.

"I kept wondering if what I was feeling was at all like falling" (147).

I love Mr Black.  Now, Oskar meets a lot of Mr Blacks, but Oskar meets a Mr Black who lives in the apartment exactly above him.  He's certainly my favourite character in the book.  He's so alive.  He's just bursting.  I wish I knew someone like him--or could be someone like him.  I think some of the reason why I marked one page of his bit is because he talks about Winston Churchill--and Americans love Winston Churchill.  We really do, Americans are like Winston Churchill's little fangirls.  Also, Mr Black says that he was born on January first, nineteen-hundred--So, he's "'lived every day of the twentieth century!'" (152).  Wow!  So that would mean--I didn't realize it until just now--that he's one hundred and three, if I've done my math correctly.  But really, wow.  That's amazing.  I wonder what it would be like.
"'So many people enter and leave your life!  Hundreds of thousands of people!  You have to keep the door open so they can come in!  But it also means you have to let them go!'" (153).
"'[My wife] died twenty-four years ago!  Long time ago!  Yesterday, in my life! ... 'You don't feel bad that I asked about her?  You can tell me if you do.'  'No!' he said.  'Thinking about her is the next best thing!'" (154).
"It was getting hard to keep all the things I didn't know inside me" (154).
"'It's not a horrible world,' he told me... 'But it's filled with a lot of horrible people!'" (156).
"'I've lived long enough to know I'm not one-hundred-percent anything!'" (156).
"'Nine out of ten significant people have to do with money or war!'" (159).
So Mr Black--the one talking in all exclamations--is the veteran of both World Wars, I believe, and a few others, mayhaps--he's not quite specific with it and of course he's seen every other war of the twentieth century... He also has a bed made from a tree he cut down and carved himself.  "'Which was your last war?'  He said, 'Cutting down that tree was my last war!'  I asked him who won, which I thought was a nice question, because it would let him say that he won, and feel proud.  'The ax won!  It's always that way!'" (161).
"It made me wonder if there were other people so lonely so close.  I thought about 'Eleanor Rigby'.  It's true, where do they all come from?  And where do they all belong?" (163).  I tried to pay attention to the use of the words incredibly and extremely and close.  Mr Black was incredibly close--one floor above--but incredibly lonely.  But you don't have to be alone and isolated to be lonely, and vice versa.  You can feel alone in a room of people... And so on.
And in the next heartbeat, Oskar immediately thinks of an invention.  His idea is that you would absorb a chemical through your skin that would change colour depending on your mood--red would be anger, sad would be blue, pink would be pleased, and so on.  The water of a special shower would automatically reset you to your base mood, if you know what I mean.  It's so you would know how to treat people--you wouldn't get mad at a blue person, you wouldn't want to ruin the mood of a pink person (although it would make you incredibly guilty if you had no choice), and so on.  My favourite application for this invention:  "Another reason it would be a good invention is that there are so many times when you know you're feeling a lot of something, but you don't know what the something is.  Am I frustrated?  Am I actually just panicky? And that confusion changes your mood, it becomes your mood, and you become a confused, gray person.  But with the special water, you could look at your orange hands and think, I'm happy!  That whole time, I was actually happy!  What a relief!" (163).

"'That's the difference between heaven and hell!  In hell we starve!  In heaven we feed each other!'" (164).

Mr Black also reveals that he hasn't turned his hearing aids on for a long time--I just assume that it's been since his wife's death.  (He's been reading Oskar's lips.)  So Oskar turns them up, and it says that at that moment, a flock of birds flies by outside the window "extremely fast and incredibly close" (165).  Like I said earlier, I've been paying attention to when Jonathan uses the words in the title, and in this, all but one word is the title.  Was the title referring to this?  I have to admit that I never thought particularly about what the title could refer to or what it truly means before just now.  Could it be this?  It would be loud, very loud to Mr Black.  And clearly it was also incredibly close.  Hm.
Oskar is upset by his mom.  His mom has been seeing a person named Ron--she met him at a support group for people who had lost parts of their families.  Oskar doesn't know this, and of course he doesn't understand,  and he tells her that if he could have chosen who was killed in the towers, he'd have picked her.  He of course  instantly regrets it, and then changes his mood in his feelings book to incredibly alone.  Again, the word usage.

"We spent our lives making livings" (175).  Oskar's grandma, this time.
"He could have rebuilt the apartment by taping together the pictures" (175).
"I went to the guest room and pretended to write.  I hit the space bar again and again and again.  My life story was spaces" (176).
"It's a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we get to live only one life" (179).
"When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder.  Everything moved me.  A dog following a stranger.  That made me feel so much.  A calender that showed the wrong month.  I could have cried over it.  I did.  Where the smoke from a chimney ended.  How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table.  I spent my life learning to feel less.  Is that growing world?  Or is it something worse?  You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness" (180).
"I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live, Oskar.  Because if I were able to live my life again, I would do things differently.  I would change my life.  I would kiss my piano teacher, even if he laughed at me.  I would jump with Mary on the bed, even if I made a fool of myself.  I would send out ugly photographs, thousands of them" (185).  That was all Oskar's grandmother again, no surprise.

"I turned on the radio and found a station playing 'Hey Jude.'  It was true, I didn't want to make it bad.  I wanted to take the sad song and make it better.  It's just that I didn't know how" (207).  Oskar again.

"You can't love anything more than something you miss" (208).
I already talked about the scene where Oskar's grandfather talks about killing the animals at the zoo.  I can't be more specific.  I just can't.  If you're so serious, it's on page 213 in the hardcover, right next to a picture of a doorknob.
"One hundred years of joy can be erased in one second" (215).  And more than that.  It's like Everything is Illuminated again--such a beautiful, vibrant history, erased in a little more than one second but just the same, completely erased.
"It was her touch that saved my life" (214).
"'Life is scarier than death'" (215).

After Oskar's grandfather talks about the bombing, Oskar's grandmother talks about 9/11.  She stays with Oskar before his mother gets home, but when she goes back home--"When I no longer had to be strong in front of you, I became very weak.  I brought myself to the ground, which was where I belonged.  I hit the floor with my fists.  I wanted to break my hands, but when it hurt too much, I stopped.  I was too selfish to break my hands for my only child... I didn't feel empty.  I wished I'd felt empty... I wanted to be empty like an overturned pitcher.  But I was full like a stone" (231).

"'It was terrible.  All the things we couldn't share.  The room was filled with conversations we weren't having'" (278).

"I wish we could have wasted time" (281).

By the way, Mr Black had a lot of cards--index cards with names and one word describing the person.  Ghandi is war, Marilyn Monroe is sex, et cetera.  When Oskar goes back he says he left something in the apartment and looks to see if his father's card was added.  Instead he finds his own name.  His word is son.

And the very first--or one of the very first Mrs Blacks Oskar visits he asks to kiss.  She says no, of course, but when he visits her again she offers to (what!??).  He says that they were incredibly close--the word again--and he refuses.  He asks to hug her instead, and he starts crying and says that he wishes he could use up all his tears because he wants to be empty--like his Grandmother said (if you'll look a few quotes up).

Also, major spoiler in a second.  His mom knew the whole time.  Mrs Black--the one Oskar wanted to kiss--called her and told her everything.  Meg was really annoyed with that the first time she read it (she just reread it, but I don't know her opinion on it now).  I don't know how I feel about it.  It's funny, I kind of feel the same sort of indifference I've got with my own life.  You know?  It happened and there's nothing we can do with it.  It is what it is.  It's funny, I don't think I've ever really reacted that way to a book.  Well, it kind of kills me because he starts wondering if Mr Black ever really liked him or cared about him or just hung out with him as a favour to Mrs Schell.  That sucks, the poor kid.

He also describes himself as being incredibly close to Mrs Black's ex--they got divorced in the time between since they first met.  I won't spoil everything (like why Mr Black is important), but I think it's an interesting parallel done for a reason.  (STRUCTURALISM?  Maybe?  New criticism...?  Damn, I definitely failed that final...)  ...Crud, a little bit of spoiler coming up.  Or a lot.  Still, you've been warned.
Well, this different Mr Black met Oskar's father once.  "'For what it's worth, your father was a good man.  I only spoke with him for a few minutes, but that was long enough to see that he was good.  You were lucky to have a father like that.  I'd trade this key for that father.'  'You shouldn't have to choose.'  'No, you shouldn't'" (300).

Did I mention about how I wondered if that letter from Ringo was real?  I wonder the same thing about the letter from Stephen Hawking on page 304-305.

Grandmother's bit again: "I tried to notice everything.  I've forgotten everything important in my life... Some nights I lay awake for hours trying to remember my mother's face" (308).  This scares me so much.  This is so scary.
--But on a parallel note... Thomas SR says his problem was never letting go.  Hers is letting go.  Parallels again.
After the bombing destroyed their home: "I wanted to stay with him.  But I knew he would want me to leave him.  I told him, Daddy, I have to leave you.  Then he said something.  It was the last thing he ever said to me.  I can't remember it" (307-308).  Again... It scares me.  It kills me.  It's like in A Single Man, when George leaves Doris at the hospital and thinks that he ought to remember the moment because it could be the last time he sees her alive, but he doesn't become emotional, and in a moment he can't even fix upon the moment.  (Also, in a moment of annoyance, Wikipedia erroneously lists George in the book as George Falconer.  He's only Falconer in the film!  Also, as of this very moment, it has been fixed in the characters section.  YEAH UPPITY ISHERWOOD FAN!)
"In my dream, painters separated green into yellow and blue... Children pulled color from coloring books with crayons, and mothers who had lost children mended their black clothing with scissors..." (309).
"The mistakes I've made are dead to me.  But I can't take back the things I never did" (309).
"Lovers pulled up each other's underwear, buttoned each other's shirts, and dressed and dressed and dressed" (311).  I don't know what it is about this part, but it grabs me, it does, so much more than anything else...
"The night before I lost everything was like any other night" (313).  Again, George and Doris.
"I thought we would be awake all night.  Awake for the rest of our lives.  The spaces between our words grew" (313).  She's talking about that last night--she shared a room with her sister.

Oskar now--I won't explain the big scene with the Renter, I suddenly feel guilty about spoiling things, but...
"I kept thinking about how they were all the names of dead people, and how names are basically the only thing that dead people keep" (319).
"The renter reminded me that just because you bury something, you don't really bury it" (322).
And Oskar has a photo of a man jumping from the towers as they burned: "Was it Dad?  Maybe.  Whoever it was, it was somebody" (325).
And the end--I love the ending.  I have to have it be here:
"If I'd had more pictures, he would've flown through a window, back into the building, and the smoke would've poured inside the hole that the plane was about to come out of.  Dad would've left his messages backward, until the machine was empty, and the plan would've flown backward away from him, all the way to Boston.  He would've taken the elevator to the street and pressed the button for the top floor.  He would've walked backward to the subway, and the subway would've gone backward through the tunnel, back to our stop.  Dad would've gone backward through the turnstile, then swiped his Metrocard backward, then walked home backward as he read The New York Times from right to left.  He would've spit coffee back into his mug, unbrushed his teeth, and put hair on his face with a razor.  He would've gotten back into bed, the alarm would've rung backward, he would've dreamt backward.  Then he would've gotten up again at the end of the night before the worst day.  He would've walked backward to my room, whistling "I Am the Walrus" backward.  He would've gotten into bed with me.  We would've looked at the stars on my ceiling, which would've pulled their lights from our eyes.  I'd have said 'Nothing' backward.  He'd have said 'Yeah, buddy?' backward.  I'd have said 'Dad' backward, which would have sounded the same as 'Dad' forward.  He would have told me the story of the Sixth Borough, from the voice in the can at the end to the beginning, from 'I love you' to 'Once upon a time...' We would have been safe" (325-326).

Perfect ending.  I also just realized: a few pages before, Oskar's grandmother talks about how she rarely ever told her sister that she loved her, because they were sisters and they knew.  She ends it with how she never said that she loved her sister that night before the bombing--it didn't seem necessary because they both knew.  She says that the point is is that it's always necessary.  I didn't just realize what I just said.  I realized what Oskar was going to say.  He was going to say I love you, but he got shy and backed off.

So... Yeah.  There's the book.  This took me a ridiculously long time to write, but.  It's such a good book.  Really, you should read ittttt.

MLA Citation Information: Foer, Jonathan Safran.  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.  Houghton Mifflin Company: New York, 2005.


Last Post's Cryptic Song Lyrics: Cinnamon Lips by OK Go
This Post's Cryptic Song Lyrics: Language is the liquid that we're all dissolved in, great for solving problems after it creates a problem

(This one is ridiculously easy, by the way.  Ridiculously.)
(And spellchecker hates me as always.)