A Changing Ride

Writing about a book before you finish reading it is like writing about a drive in a car before it’s over. The first part might be through green countryside with some little clusters of trees, maybe cows on a hill in the distance, but the whole second half of the drive might be along a superhighway with one of those noise-blocking walls running all along one side.

I’d been reading Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer. Hadn’t yet read 100 pages, and this is what I thought:

This book makes me smile out loud. And it makes my heart hurt.

I’ve been spiraling toward it for months, picked it up at the bookstore and read the first page. “I should read this.” Noticed the cover afresh, weeks later, and thought, “I should read this.” Remembered the look of Elijah Wood in his thick glasses in commercials for the movie of it and wondered about the movie of it. “I should just read it.” Read the first page, and said, “Don, have you read this? Just read the first page, Don,” which caused me to read the first page again. Finally, I picked it up at the library and am reading it.

This book is three things.

It is the voice of a young Ukrainian man who is in love with the idea of America, the coolness of America, what he understands to be the maleness of America. He speaks English, and no accent is suggested in the writing, but I can hear one loud and clear. In his attempt to sound more intelligent, more at home with this second language, he uses a thesaurus heavily, and instead of saying he “sat” somewhere, he might say he “roosted” somewhere. Instead of saying his grandfather slept, he says he “manufactured Z’s.” His family doesn’t “call” him by his first name, Alex, they “dub” him “Alli,” “Shapka,” and “Alexi-stop-spleening me!” He is as funny and as naive and as sad as Holden Caulfield.

It is also this character’s letters to the author himself, Jonathan Safran Foer, because in the novel, they meet. These letters are endearing in their honestly and in Alex’s need for the American author to like him.

And, it is a far away story. One part Jewish. One part Magic Realism. One part Longing.

Foer writes beautifully, “She was a genius of sadness, immersing herself in it, separating its numerous strands, appreciating its subtle nuances. She was a prism through which sadness could be divided into its infinite spectrum.”

And, “[She] discovered 613 sadnesses, each perfectly unique, each a singular emotion, no more similar to any other sadness than to anger, ecstasy, guilt, or frustration. Mirror Sadness. Sadness of Domesticated Birds. Sadness of Being Sad in Front of One’s Parent. Humor Sadness. Sadness of Love Without Release.”

You see?

Then I read further. Over half way. And things are changing.

While this book is crude from the first few pages, it wasn’t ugly then. It wasn’t common. Now it’s taken a turn toward that. I hate when art gets ugly for ugliness’ sake. I don’t want to follow a movie character into a bathroom to see them sit on a toilet. I don’t need to see the sex act being performed yet again just because the book or movie can show it. Please.
I’m disappointed and hopeful that this book will redeem itself, but I won’t write any more about it until this ride is over.