Here We Aren’t, So Quickly, by Jonathan Safran Foer

From “Here We Aren’t, So Quickly,” by Jonathan Safran Foer, from the 20 Under 40 issue of The New Yorker that I just now brought back from home. It’s a short story, not a book, but just… read this. It begins:

“I was not good at drawing faces. I was just joking most of the time. I was not decisive in changing rooms or anywhere. I was so late because I was looking for flowers. I was just going through a tunnel whenever my mother called. I was not able to make toast without the radio. I was not able to tell if compliments were backhanded. I was not as tired as I said.”

From halfway through, when you find out about the baby: “They encouraged us to buy insurance. We had sex to have orgasms. You loved re-upholstering… He could stand himself up, but not get himself down.”

From the end: “I changed and changed and changed, and with more time I will change more… We reached the middle so quickly. After everything it’s like nothing. I have always never been here. What a shame it wasn’t easy. What a waste of what? What a joke. But come. No explaining or mending. Be beside me somewhere: on the split stools of this bar, by the edge of this cliff, in the seats of this borrowed car, at the prow of this ship, on the all-forgiving cushions of this threadbare sofa in this one-story copper-crying fixer-upper whose windows we once squinted through for hours before coming to our senses: ‘What would we even do with such a house?’”

Jesus, this short story is good. All the stories in this issue are knockouts but I think it’s obvious from the first bit that this one is unusual: a wry, exceedingly sad lamentation told in this strict but perfectly fitted formula. I do think something about it is incredibly derivative, though; the rhythm of it sounds like a poem that would not be as good as the story, and there are almost cheesy parts, like this–“We went to Tobey Pond every year until we didn’t”–and the sort of emo quality of “Be beside me somewhere” through the image of “the prow of this ship” is as indulgent as it is affecting. But still, I loved it. I spent most of this story feeling like someone was stabbing me, so it has to be art–isn’t that how it works?

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer

Despite the fact that this is one of my favorite books ever, I never talk about it, and thus far I’ve deliberately avoided Safran Foer and his wife Nicole Krauss (The History of Love) in this blog. Because the thing about the two of them is that they make their books so twee and lovable and perfectly engineered to fit the tastes of ponderous young readers and writers that it’s just like: there is nothing left to say. It’s like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind or Garden State when it first came out. Everyone loves these books and if they don’t, the reason is usually that they think the books are too precious and lovable. And yes, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close may get a little precious–the main character is a tambourine-playing, liberal, thoughtful, vegan Manhattan boy named Oskar who speaks several languages and whose father was killed in 9/11–but throughout, it is legitimately creative and innovative and easy and fun. And hey, if someone didn’t like me because I was too precious and lovable, I’d be happy as shit.

Basically what distinguishes Safran Foer’s (and his wife’s) books for me is an earnest excess of feeling. There’s a part where a character thinks, “I worried about her [his mother], putting all of her life into her story, no, I was so happy for her, I remembered the feeling she was feeling, the exhilaration of building the world anew.” This is the adorable vulnerability that runs through this book. More restrained than with Dave Eggers, but kind of the same thing. It’s impossible to resist the charm.