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Foer illuminates everything in debut
By Adam Petty
Features Editor
FILE PHOTO
The young hot-shot novelist Jonathon Safan Foer
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In the tiny Polish town of Trachimbod, in the years just before World War II, a young boy goes to the town library looking for a novel written by his great-grandfather. One room of the library is devoted entirely to novels written by the town’s citizens, all of them having been produced during the novel-writing craze of 1850-53.
Knowing neither the book’s title nor his grandfather’s nom de plume, he describes the book’s plot to the librarian by saying, It’s about love. The librarian laughs and says, They’re all about love.
This last remark could describe Jonathan Safran Foer’s wonderful new novel “Everything is Illuminated,” although don’t let that make you think this is a historical romance. This book is about love in the grand sense, that which claims and ruins and saves lives.
Much of the talk about this novel thus far has centered on the author, and not without reason.
Born in 1977, Foer wrote this novel while still an undergraduate at Yale and published it soon after graduation, thus making him the envy of hopeful writers everywhere. But his biography would still be rather unremarkable, were it not that he has written such a remarkable first novel.
Almost two books in one, “Everything is Illuminated” has two distinct narratives which play off of each other and finally connect in a roundabout way.
The first relates the history of the town of Trachimbrod, a small Jewish village in what would now be Poland. These chapters of the book have a feel reminiscent of the so-called magical realism books of 20th century Latin America.
For instance, in one of the book’s opening scenes, which takes place in 1791, a merchant named Trachim B is traveling alone in wagon. The wagon turns over in the river, Trachim drowns in it, and from the wagon floats a curious piece of jetsam: a newborn baby girl, still covered in amniotic fluids, whose existence the townsfolk are unable to explain. Scenes such as this run all throughout the one part of the book.
The other plotline takes place in present-day Poland. Narrated by university student Alexander Perchov in malaprop-laden English (“Mother dubs me Alexi-stop-spleening-me!, because I am always spleening her.”), he tells the story of how he translated for the American Jonathan Safran Foer while he was in Poland to do research on his family history.
Now, when I first read that the author was a character in his own book, I became suspicious. It seemed like a cute literary trick, the kind a writer would use to get him- or herself to be declared ‘cutting-edge’ or, better still, ‘avant-garde’ by the intelligentsia. But Foer nicely avoids the trap of becoming too clever for his and his readers’ good, and the best thing I can say about this device is that I didn’t notice it as I went on with the book.
In fact, this technique even works well in illustrating one of the novel’s main themes, that of discovering the past. I don’t know how factual all of this is, but in “Everything is Illuminated,” the story of Trachimbrod is the story of Foer’s family, with the baby from the river, later named Brod, presented as his great-great-great-great-great-grandmother.
As we read of the Trachimbrodians getting married, having children, falling in love—half of the chapters are titled “Falling in Love”—we feel as if we’re unearthing a tree sprout to find yards and yards of roots beneath it.
As the book progresses, it movingly fleshes out a drama that is perhaps particular to our generation: that of discovering the history of a family you may not feel any connection to.
Throughout the novel, Foer uses a sense of humor that many people will find familiar. For instance, Alexander’s grandfather requires a seeing-eye dog named Sammy Davis, Junior, Junior.
Jonathan also makes a faux pas when he tells Alexander that he does not eat meat, thus limiting his choice of Polish cuisine to coffee and bran muffins. But there’s a welcome lack of self-consciousness here as compared to other books by writers of Foer’s generation.
I’m reluctant to reveal too much about the plot, as there are some turns that I don’t want to spoil.
To give a quick run-through, this book has a book of recurrent dreams, Upright and Sloucher synagogues, and a woman who has never heard of America.
Perhaps the best word of praise that I can give is that I started this book at the beginning of an eight- hour airplane flight and hardly put it down the whole time.
This may be the first time you’ve heard the name Jonathan Safran Foer, but I’m certain it won’t be the last.
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