Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

I read this book when it was first published in 2005, and I remember thinking it was great. So when Girl Detective announced it as the September book for her Gods and Monsters book club, I thought, well, cool beans, always nice to revisit a good book, right?

Except when it turns out not to be anywhere near as good as you remember it being.

This time through, my primary feeling was annoyance. I found the overly precocious narrator, Oskar, annoying. I found his grandfather's letters annoying. I found all the tricksy, cutesy stuff the author did annoying. There are illustrations and textual additions that are supposed to do something, but all they did was annoy me. I mean, for crying out loud, look at this:

A photo of a doorknob and text splattered with red marks. Let me add: that entire chapter was splattered with red marks. 

And don't even get me started on the text that bunched in on itself, for pages.

I'm not opposed to unique storytelling formats when they actually serve the story. I've read Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad twice now, and both times I loved loved loved the Powerpoint chapter. To me, it's a great representation of the character, fits who she is and what she's writing about. The mess above? Not so much.

Plus there are plot items that not only annoyed me, they made me cranky. So--Oskar's a little boy, extremely bright, with parents who were pretty frank with him about things, but neither of them thought to explain what a more contemporary definition of the word "pussy" was? And really--if Oskar's father died on 9/11, would his mother really be OK with Oskar wandering all over NYC by himself for hours at a time, even if she knew where he was going? She'd be confident that he'd be safe? Really? Really? 

I have to wonder if the reason I thought well of it in 2005 was that it seemed far too soon after 9/11 itself to be critical of a piece of writing about it. Like, then the terrorists would win. Maybe that's part of my problem with the book, too--not that I've read every novel written with 9/11 as a backdrop or starting point, but I've read several, and really, they pretty much all pale in comparison with the real stories that happened that day. A much better book--as far as I remember--is the nonfiction account 102 Minutes. It's straightforward, honest, and heartbreaking.

Nothing tricksy about it.

Comments

[cbjames]

I agree with you, that textual tricks are annoying, except when they aren't. I've not read this book because the textual tricks look very precocious on the surface. I loved the Powerpoint presentation in Goon Squad, which I read twice as well. When visual/textual tricks work they can be wonderful. I've been loving the ones Lawrence Sterne uses in Tristram Shandy which I've been reading this year. His are very clever.

[Miss T]

Wait. It's Everything is Illuminated that I have. Which also looks annoying.

[Girl Detective]

I came around to Oskar going around NYC because a friend remarked that since it seemed to be helping him heal, why wouldn't his mom let him do that, with some safety nets (like his soon to be accompanier) with him, if it might prevent his being institutionalized? One the one hand, there's a "what was she thinking" aspect, but on the other, there's a "wow, that's a brave mom to help her kid when he's trying to figure it all out."

Everything is Illuminated is only about 1/3 annoying. I found this about 1/2. Good stuff in here, though.

I HATED the weird grandparent sex stuff in both books. I'm happy that grandparents had/have sex. But I don't want to know details, esp. weird, upsetting kinky ones.

[JoAnn]

Well I'm glad it's not just me! Recently started this book and it irritated the heck out of me. At first, I attributed it to being too soon to read another precocious child narrator (finished ROOM a couple months ago),but maybe it is just plain annoying...

[Amy Rea]

JoAnn, I could handle the narrator of Room just fine. Oskar, not so much.
Miss T, I watched the movie Everything is Illuminated and it was kind of annoying too. But it did have the benefit of having Eugene Hutz, lead singer for Gogol Bordello, in it. I still have no interest in reading the book.
Girl Detective, I see your point about Oskar and his mom, but I dunno, I still don't quite buy it.
CB, I have not read Tristram Shandy in years. Are you enjoying it?

[Doug]

I can take this book off my list, then-- it sounds about as smug as I feared it was. I think lately literary authors are reining themselves in on the structural wankery like Foer's using here (or at least not constructing entire novels from it like House of Leaves or Raw Shark Texts). Egan's Powerpoint story made sense for the reasons you listed, and what helped was that it was a single self-contained story.

[Amy Rea]

"structural wankery"--oh, what a most excellent term for what Foer is doing here! House of Leaves, ugh. I could not get through that one.