Jonathan Safran Foer - Everything Is Illuminated: Includes an Exclusive Interview With the Author

In some ways, I found Jonathan Safran Foer's debut novel Everything is Illuminated very easy to read, and I'll choose excerpts in a way that should let you decide if you agree. It was easy to read because it generally moves fast. It was easy to read because it never bored me: because I always found something funny, or lively, or touching, or harrowing, or profound, or just memorably weird around the next bend.

It was easy to read because it's oddly humble, too. I've seen writers make themselves one of the characters before, but the Jonathan Safran Foer inside the novel – whom we only witness through the eyes of a young Ukrainian man named Alex – hides his moments of wisdom amid a basic role as a comic foil, a vain bumbler in waaay over his head in a land whose language he doesn't understand. The book even contains its own auto-critique, as Alex challenges Jonathan on a detail here, a characterization or even a theme there; what's the fun in not liking a book that can take itself down faster and harder than you can? (Mind you, I'm also a fan of the movie Adaptation.)

In certain ways, even the structure is easy, if odd. The Jonathan of the story had visited the Ukraine, hiring Alex through a travel agency as his eager, semi-qualified young interpreter. Jonathan was seeking a villager woman named Augustine who had rescued his grandfather from the Holocaust. The novel, then, is a simple and regular three-part alteration:

-- We read a chapter or two of Alex's story about their search for Augustine.
-- We read a chapter or two of Jonathan's stories about his ancestors and their village of Trachimbrod.
-- We read Alex's latest letter to Jonathan, talking of his life and trading advice about the latest chapters of each writer's story. Repeat cycle.

Unconventional, then, but easy to get used to. Or it could be, except...

Everything is Illuminated is a difficult novel. In small part, that's for stupid, frustrating reasons: the longer dialogues sometimes require very close reading to be sure who's talking when, and a few of his paragraphs run longer than his pages. But mostly, it's difficult like any book that ranges across two continents, 200 years, and not two but maybe dozens of distinct narrating voices: the primary sources that Jonathan, the character, finds or invents.

I liked the novel right away, and Cindy (to whom I was reading it) was never less than intrigued. Still, we were about 3/4 done before I decided it was great or she that it was really really good … and even then, neither of us could have told you what the novel was _about_, what linked all the mini-tales together. In fact, I only figured out (or decided) what the central story and theme were about ten minutes after we finished the last page, after I'd begun our thinking out loud with the sentence "Hmm! I'm not sure what I thought of the ending".

Let me be clear: ever since those ten minutes, I've believed that Everything is Illuminated has a great central story, a worthy theme; that it's a Great novel. More importantly, I don't think it's a story that could have been told well _without_ dragging in the dozens of sub-stories, musings, and imagined primary sources that make up the novel. But I can discuss that story only at the review's end, with spoiler warnings to keep you away until you've read the novel on faith. The result is that, to love this book, you'll have to enjoy it like I did: paragraph by paragraph, invention by invention, gag by gag, patiently caring about each story that flits across the page. So here: with bits of annotation, I'll let you sample a few.

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There is, for example, the charming awkwardness of the early chapters, as Alex – a bright Ukrainian armed with a thesaurus and thus dangerous – struggles to learn English with style:

Now is a befitting time to mention Grandfather, who is also fat, but yet more fat than my parents. OK, I will mention him. He has gold teeth and cultivates ample hairs on his face to comb by the dusk of every day… His final employment was at Heritage Touring, where he commenced to toil into the 1950s and persevered until of late. But now he is retarded and lives on our street. My grandmother died two years yore of a cancer in her brain, and Grandfather became very melancholy, and also, he says, blind. Father does not believe him, but purchased Sammy Davis Junior, Junior for him nonetheless, because a Seeing Eye biitch is not only for blind people but for people who pine for the negative of loneliness.

(I also liked when Sammy Davis Junior, Junior – taken along with Alex and Grandfather to pick up Jonathan, a.k.a. "the Jew" – is given a proud T-shirt naming her the OFFICIOUS BITCH OF THE HERITAGE TOURING COMPANY. Soon Alex will outgrow phrases like "the multitudinous petite villages that still endure", but the opposite of "easy" will be "rigid" forever.)

There is, then again, the communal seriousness of the Book of Recurrent Dreams, maintained in the village of Trachimbrod before and after Jonathan's great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother is rescued from the Trachimbrod River. Any citizen may contribute the stories visiting them each night, making a book for them all:

4:512: The dream of sex without pain. I dreamt four nights ago of clock hands descending from the universe like rain, of the moon as a green eye, of mirrors and insects, of a love that never withdrew. It was not the feeling of completeness that I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty. The dream ended when I felt my husband enter me … 4:513: The dream of angels dreaming of men. It was during an afternoon nap that I dreamt of a ladder. Angels were sleepwalking up and down the rungs, their eyes closed, their breath heavy and dull, their wings hanging limp at the sides. I bumped into an old angel as I passed him, waking and startling him. He looked like my grandfather did before he passed away last year, when he would pray each night to die in his sleep. Oh, the angel said to me, I was just dreaming of you … 4:514: The dream of, as silly as it sounds, flight … 4:515: The dream of the waltz of feast, famine, and feast.

(I can't help but find the 2-feasts-to-1-famine ratio oddly optimistic. Perhaps I've too recently heard Too Much Joy's peppy song "My Past Lives", in which "I've lived to be 98, and I have died when I was four/ I have lived through war and peace and war and war and war and war".)

There's the terrifying comedy of Jonathan's first meal in the Ukraine – at once a surreal (I hope) exaggeration and a reminder of life in Iowa:

'One thing, though', the hero said, 'I'm a vegetarian'. 'I do not understand'. 'I don't eat meat'. 'Why not?' 'I just don't'. 'How can you not eat meat?' 'I just don't'. 'He does not eat meat', I informed Grandfather. 'Yes he does', he informed me. 'Yes you do', I likewise informed the hero. 'No, I don't'. 'Why not?', I inquired him again. 'I just don't. No meat'. 'Pork?' 'No'. 'Meat?' 'No meat'. 'Steak?' 'Nope'. 'Chickens?' 'No'. 'Do you eat veal?' 'Oh, God, absolutely no veal'. 'What about sausage?' 'No sausage either'.

(Jonathan will also have to specify that he does not eat hamburger, tongue, sausage, or sausage. The confused restaurant will eventually agree to just bring Jonathan two potatoes, once Alex politely defends Jonathan by explaining that he's not quite right in the head; but only if Jonathan allows a piece of steak to be placed on his plate, untouched.)

On a happier note, back in the 1790s, there's the love between Jonathan's great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother and her very old adoptive father:

"I brought you some books in Lutsk", he told her, shutting the door on the early evening and the rest of the world.
"We can't afford those", she said, taking the heavy bag. "I'll have to return them tomorrow".
"But we can't afford not to have them. Which can we not-afford more, having them or not having them? As I see it, we lose either way. My way, we lose with the books".
"You're ridiculous, Yankel".
"I know", he said, "because I also brought you a compass from my architect friend and several books of French poetry".
"But I don't speak French".
"What could be a better occasion to learn?"
"Having a French language textbook".
"Ah, yes, I knew there was a reason I bought this!", he said, removing a thick brown book from the bottom of the bag.
"You're impossible, Yankel!"
"I'm possibly possible".
"Thank you", she said, and kissed him on the forehead, which was the only place she had ever kissed or been kissed, and would have been, if not for all the novels she read, the only place she thought people ever kissed.

She had to secretly return so many of the things Yankel bought for her. He never noticed, because he couldn't remember ever having bought them.

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I should warn you that not all of the most powerful passages are sweetness and farce – not in a shtetl in czarist (later Communist) Russia, where the town is divided by "the Jewish/ Human faultline" and the Ukraine is in reach of enemy tanks. There are passages that remind me of a scene from Angel where a vampire has kidnapped a boyfriend and girlfriend. "You love her, don't you?", the vamp asks the terrified guy, who nods. "You'd do anything for her?" Trapped and miserable, the guy nods. "Okay, I'll kill one of you. Who's it gonna be: her or you?" That Angel scene, though crudely written, chilled me: I have no idea which of us Cindy would spare, given that choice, nor whether I would spare her. Still, at least in that situation, you feel fairly sure that you're _supposed_ to be the brave self-sacrificer. Foer's scenes are not crudely written, and human tormenters, cleverer and realer, don't always leave an ethical high road to take.

But never mind, for now. Everything is Illuminated is much fuller of sex, love, gossip, and towns torn asunder by orange dye and thieving mice. And it is full of people trying to figure things out and share what they've learned: from Jonathan and Alex's discussions of writing, to the generations of Trachimbroders who take ever-more-detailed notes on their activities and thoughts. So that one day their children, and later we, could read about:

The culpable fly was caught in the net of an unidentified schoolboy. The boy raised his hand to smash it, knowing that an example must be made, but as his fist began its descent, the fly twitched its wing without flight. The boy, the sensitive boy, was overcome by the fragility of life and released the fly. The fly, also overcome, died of gratitude. An example was made.

Or about:

US, THE JEWS: Jews are those things that God loves. Since roses are beautiful, we must assume God loves them. Therefore, roses are Jewish. By the same reasoning, the stars and planets are Jewish, all children are Jewish, pretty 'art' is Jewish (Shakespeare wasn't Jewish, but Hamlet was), and sex, when practiced between a husband and wife in a good and suitable position, is Jewish. Is the Sistine Chapel Jewish? You'd better believe it.

Or about:

WHAT JACOB R. ATE FOR BREAKFAST ON THE MORNING OF FEBRUARY 21, 1877: Fried potatoes with onion. Two slices of black bread.

Like amateur geneologists trying to find the saviors of their Ukranian grandparents, or like twenty-somethings sharing their feelings on LiveJournal, the humans in Illuminated are writing, in part, to show that are writing; to show that they are living; to respect the past of others in hopes that the future will pay respects of its own.

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Which should be a good enough unifying theme while you're reading. It's not, I think, the most important theme or story, or the one that requires such an odd structure; but like I say, that only comes clear at the book's end, and I'd rather not spoil what happens for those of you who haven't read it.

You're still here? Okay, a hint: the central story is young Alex's, not Jonathan's or Augustine's or Sammy Davis Junior, Junior's. Look, the only reason I'm gonna write more is that maybe some of you did finish, and (just like me) said "Hmm! I'm not sure what I think of the ending", only now it's three hours or three years later and you're still not sure and you're wondering what I got from this.

Hence this big spoiler. Come back when you're done with the book. You are? Hi there! Welcome back!

What you noticed, perhaps with frustration, is that Jonathan and Alex and Grandfather never do find Augustine: after all that searching, she remains a legend, an old photograph and nothing more. In fact, it is precisely in order to finally find Augustine that Grandpa asks Alex for his saved-up money; and it is precisely Alex's saying "No, my brother and I need this money" that makes Grandpa proud to be turned down. This is happening at the same time that Alex stops signing his letters "Guilelessly" and instead signs them without guile; the same time that Alex stops accepting American money or demanding American literary advice. The same time that Alex resolves things forever with his Dad, whom he said from the start was never physically abusive, and said it in a way that implied it was the whole list of Dad's virtues.

This story, laced with two centuries of past that float between reality, utopia, and cuckooland, turns out to be a story _against_ nostalgia, against posterity. Even the Nazi arrival in Trachimbrod was so awful only because the citizens had dismissed the blaring signs of their near future, and spent their days reclaiming their favorite old stories and routines. "We are writing", the Trachimbroders said, "we are writing, we are writing" ... but the past you write down is no good if you're not going to let it wise you up about the future. Old stories are lovely, and so is thanks to long-ago saviors, but we often tell old stories just to feel busy, when we should be making new ones.

I suppose that, as a sometimes history teacher, I should object to this. But I've never been a Civil War re-enactor, never toured graveyards of the famous. I learn things in order to apply them, to understand the world around me.

Or so I tell my students, in the hopes of reaching them; cuz honestly, I do sometimes just love to learn neat stuff. Even if some novelist had to invent it for me.