An Illuminating Text

I'd love to one day do a search and see just how many reviews of the book Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer actually used the above title. I'm sure there were a great deal, but I'm also sure that I'm way too lazy to figure it out.

That said, I'm not exactly sure just how illuminating the book really was. You may remember from my review of Beasts of No Nation (or, more likely, you don't) how I didn't like the story because the language was hard to get past. My point was that the story should always come first, and the language second.

Well, I need to amend that.

You see, I guess what really bothered me about the language in that story was that I wasn't entertained by the story. Foer, however, creates a character whose language, while not exactly English, is hilarious because of his mistakes. Alex, a Ukrainian translator, has the trouble that any non-native speaker would have with English, since there are dozens of words that mean sort of the same thing, but not really. As such, we get phrases such as “I am a premium person,” “disseminate currency” (for spending a lot of money), and “manufacturing z’s” (a personal favorite of a friend of mine).

The story, too, is very non-traditional, in the way it jumps between times and narrative styles. Half the book is letters from Alex to “the hero”, who happens to be named Jonathan Safran Foer. He discusses how the translation and writing is going, and also tells Jonathan about his personal life as well. Obviously the point is that although Jonathan is traveling to learn about his own story, we, as the reader, end up learning much more about Alex in the end.

The other parts of the book follow the actions of either Jonathan’s ancestors or the near-present action of Jonathan actually coming to the Ukraine. Some of this is interesting, some of it isn’t: in the end, this is not the story you really care about. You care about Alex, and his interpretation of the events, and how he eventually applies them to his own life. Not that the other parts are not well written (although, Foer does occasionally fall into that modern-novel trap of incorporating stream of consciousness despite the fact that it’s incredibly hard to read, and novels are supposed to be entertainment, and . . . you can see other rants of mine on this topic in both past and future posts), but the story is ultimately unresolved as far as Jonathan goes. In the end, or perhaps even in the beginning, I think that Foer knew he had something great going with Alex, and didn’t spend the time necessary to develop the other plots more fully. It would be interesting to think that one of the results of this was having Alex write the story in the novel anyway.

I know I’m a Johnny-come-lately to this novel. I’d been meaning to read it for a long time, considering I’d seen it every time I would walk into a Borders or Barnes and Noble. It was always one of the books on that table in the front of “Must Read” books that I’m o-so-curious to figure out how they determine which books make the cut. It has that funky cover and comes in a variety of colors, but for some reason I never purchased it. I think part of me didn’t want to read it because it was too trendy (a term I wonder about in regards to literature). I also remember hearing mixed reviews from various people that I tend to respect. In the end, though, I decided to buy it with a gift-card I had (a great arbitrator in purchasing decisions that can’t be made), and I’m pretty glad I did. While not the greatest book I’ve read even this year, it certainly is literature worth consuming. I’m not sure where Foer will end up in the pantheon of his generation’s writers (and I use generation loosely to include Chabon, Eggers, Palanhuik, Foster Wallace, and other writers of that ilk), but I know this book will be remembered fondly with one of the more memorable characters to be penned.

I’m sure the book sales probably help him sleep well at night, too.

I would like to note that I have not yet seen the movie, but I am again hesitant, because I hear that it is not that good, which totally makes sense, because books that are so narrator driven rarely make the leap to the silver screen.

Remember this: If you see a movie based on a book, and you see the movie first, you must be sure to go read the book regardless of how much you liked/disliked the movie. The reason for this is because if a book was considered good enough to be green-lighted into a movie, then it is usually a very good book. Just because they mangled it on the screen does not mean the author had equally mangled it on the pages of his or her novel. It is always important to remember that movie companies are out solely to make money, and they are not going to risk optioning a book that they don’t think is great when they could just as easily pay a lot less for someone to make any movie that ends up starring The Rock.