arts & life

book fair

It’s A

Classic!

By Elizabeth Applebaum | Special to the Jewish News

From Jonathan Safran

Foer to a night of Star

Trek, the JCC’s Annual

Book Fair offers more

than 30 authors and

events that boldly go

where no Book Fair

has ever gone before.

Jonathan Safran Foer

T

he poet Galway Kinnell
believed that “The secret
title of every good poem
might be ‘Tenderness.’”
It’s a sentiment that could
be applied to the novels of one
Kinnell’s admirers, Jonathan
Safran Foer, as well.
Though they focus on fierce
subjects (the Holocaust, 9-11, the
destruction of Israel), Foer’s nov-
els always exude a kind of long-
ing for things that are gone, that
will never again be. In Extremely
Loud and Incredibly Close, a boy
named Oskar whose father died
on 9-11, imagines a book with

everything backward so his father
would leave the Twin Towers
instead of entering them. He and
his dad would then sit together in
his room at bedtime, looking at
the stars on the ceiling, and their
conversation would go backward,

from his father’s “I love you”
when he left the room to “Once
upon a time” as he tells Oskar a
goodnight story, and then: “We
would have been safe.”
It has been 14 years since
Foer’s first novel, Everything Is
Illuminated, was published, a
novel that prompted the Times
of London to say that the author
had “staked his claim for literary
greatness.” Three years later came
Extremely Loud and Incredibly
Close, then the non-fiction Eating
Animals, then Tree of Codes, a
work of art plus short novel plus
poem. He edited, with author
Nathan Englander, The New
American Haggadah, and he’s
won many literary prizes, includ-
ing the National Jewish Book
Award.
Foer’s latest novel is Here I Am,
which the New York Times called
his “best and most caustic novel,
filled with so much pain and
regret that your heart sometimes
struggles to hold it all . . . Once
put down it begs . . . to be picked
back up . . . Here I Am has more
teeming life in it than several
hundred well-meaning and well-
reviewed books of midlist fiction
put together.”
Foer says Here I Am is his “best
answer” to how he feels about his
Judaism. “It’s the place I took that
question most seriously” and is
“a full expression of how compli-
cated that is.” The central ideas in
the book are “home, people look-
ing for home, home and home-
lands in terms of family, religion
and all alone,” he says.
Foer will be among the more
than 30 authors speaking at the

Jewish Community Center of
Metropolitan Detroit’s Annual
Jewish Book Fair, November
2-13.
Foer will speak at 6 p.m.
Thursday, Nov. 3, at the Berman
Center for the Performing Arts,
followed by a book sale and sign-
ing.
“Jonathan Safran Foer at
once writes to the depths of
our Judaism and humanity,”
said Book Fair co-chair Susan
Lutz. “His new book, Here I
Am, aptly tells the tale of a fam-
ily living Jewishly in the dias-
pora. What makes them Jewish,
and what is their duty to Israel?
Foer struggles with the belief in
God, and yet his story reassures
an indication of the concept.
Forgiveness, righteousness and
responsibility are thoughtfully
considered in this must-read
novel for any Jew living the
span of 20th-21st centuries in
America.”
Foer was born in 1977 in
Washington, D.C., the middle of
three sons.
He was never one of those
kids certain of what he wanted
to do when he grew up. But he
had a feeling “that I wanted to
know, that the answer would be a
release and let me go.” He was, he
says, “longing to know.”
He found his answer at
Princeton, where he earned a
degree in philosophy. Foer took
an introductory writing class
with Joyce Carol Oates, who
later served as adviser for his
senior thesis — which evolved
into Everything Is Illuminated.
Published in 2002, the book tells

of a young American Jewish man
who goes in search of the woman
who saved his grandfather’s life
in WWII. Both Everything Is
Illuminated and Foer’s next novel,
Extremely Loud and Incredibly
Close, were quickly made into
films.
So now he knew what he
would do with his life. And it is a
very good life.
“Who could be luckier?” he
says. “I have no constraints. I can
really just work from a position
of my own joy or at least my own
exploration.”
How Foer writes has changed
over time. He used to be an early
riser, and he could use his day
as he chose. Then he married
and had two boys (he has since
divorced) and so, he says, “the
logistics of life” now come in to
play.
Everything starts with a bit of
what he calls an itch.
Like thinking about those
people who, at first glance, seem
ordinary — but are sometimes
tremendously dedicated soldiers
of the past.
Civil War reenactors are a bit
of an itch these days for Foer.
There is, in particular, a group
known as “Progressives,” who
remain in character at all times,
wearing only military outfits and
clothing that might have been
found in the 1860s, eating only
food like cornmeal and hardtack.
The next step: “Let’s just give
this a little time and space and
see.”
Because maybe the
Progressives will turn out to be
just that small itch you scratch

continued on page 42

October 20 • 2016

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