The Bleak Book Group

Thursday April 26, 2007 in |

Maybe it’s because I haven’t left it long enough since finishing The Book Thief, but I found Everything Is Illuminating difficult reading. Difficult in it’s subject matter of the Holocaust rather that Jonathan Safran Foer’s experimental shifts in writing style; although at times I did find the book often trying too hard to impress. On the whole the novel is a great achievement. Foer wrote Everything Is Illuminated when he was in his early twenties, which is part of the reason I’ve put it off for so long. How can such a youngster write so deeply? Okay, how can he be so illuminating? Maybe I’m just prejudiced as an oldie.

Everything Is Illuminated is at times hilarious, such as the account of the journey that the Foer character, his interpreter, his interpreter’s grandfather and a flatulent dog called Sammy Davis Junior Junior embark upon. At other times it’s heartbreaking; the Holocaust flashbacks, and what eventually happens to the characters that we grow fond of. I loved it, but I was also infuriated by it. At times I hated it. I lapped it up and despaired of it it turn. I embraced its insight and then I didn’t understand it. I found it a breeze and then I found it unbearable. I couldn’t put it down and then I didn’t want to pick it up. Flaws in me rather than the book, perhaps. Who am I to say?

Everything Is Illuminated is one of those books I find I am unable to review, possibly because it demands rereading before fully understanding. I can only make a small suggestion. Form a book group. Recruit as many people as you can, all creeds, all ages. Read this book. I found that Patrick McCabe’s Winterwood was the same for me in that I couldn’t review it, and I am soon to start on McCabe’s The Butcher Boy, another possibly disturbing novel I’ve heard great things about.

Before that, however, I’m having a go at Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. You’ve guessed it. The novel is bleak and disturbing, but gripping nevertheless. And I’m reading Philip Roth’s Everyman after that. But whoever said things were going to be easy?

The Bleak Book Group. Apply here…

I had a hard time with Everything Is Illuminated as well, at times loving it and eventually feeling disappointed by the end. I think your second paragraph is a perfect summary of my feelings about the book—to the point that it’s actually rather creepy. A number of my close friends read it around the same time I did, and got the feeling their reaction was the same as mine, but not as strong in either direction. This, I submitted to them, was a result of my own intensity and enthusiasm while reading. They agreed. All this to say that I don’t think you and I are alone, and that the reactions we felt have as much to do with the text itself as our personal subjective responses to it.

JSF is clearly a gifted writer, and when this book is on it’s marvelous: hysterical, heart-breaking, inspiring, etc etc. But I don’t know many books that felt deeper and more meaningful in the middle than at the end, and I think that’s the main shortcoming of Everything Is Illuminated.

Forgive my lack of specificity; I read it last summer.

ted    Thursday April 26, 2007   

I think maybe I became drunk on some of the pleasures of Everything Is Illuminated far too quickly.

You’re right in saying that it was much deeper in the middle than at the end; and by the end the hangover had already started to kick in.

Stephen    Friday April 27, 2007   

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