Deborah Solomon Jonathan Safran Foer MASH!
This profile in the New York Times Magazine occasioned much smirking in the literary blogs, which gives me an opportunity to pool together links to said blogs.
Gawker's take on the interview: Foer as emo-boy.
The Rake's Progress calls reading the profile like drunkenly opening the wrong door at a party.
GalleyCat's first reaction: "Worst...Profile...Ever." And her second reaction: "'Epistolary Climax': Reaction Shot, Take Two." Nathalie stresses Foer's responsibility for Solomon's crush-article and suggests that Foer might have a thing for letter-writing.
The New York Observer speculates about what some of those emails exchanged back-n-forth might have looked like. (via Bookslut)
Maud Newton contains herself to calling the profile "strange" and linking to the Observer piece above.
In the minority, Bookdwarf read the profile as making Foer seem "nice" and "less pretentious than...imagined."
The Elegant Variation is too high-minded to comment on the profile, but I'll link to this post instead, which points out that much of the loathing felt for Foer can be attributed to jealousy. The Literary Saloon is of course above commenting on local gossip. MobyLives doesn't comment, either, which surprises me a little.
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For myself, I disliked Foer's first book, and I don't think my dislike can be attributed solely to jealousy. Since I helped teach a class on this novel, my dislikes are already organized, and I just have to add bullet points.
1.--The evocation of the village's utopian past in the magical-realist mode seemed hackneyed to me. Is there a way to convey "nostaglia" and "cultural otherness" without slipping into goofy fantasias? I know the "bad" way to evoke past cultural otherness is the exotic or the anthropological, both of which modes the Said school of anti-orientalism have pretty effectively taken apart. But a really good novelist should be able to figure out some new tricks.
Let's see, in Foer's novel we get an absurdist village ritual that marks the local community as absolutely contained in its glorious uniqueness, we get a generational family romance with some delicate sexual transgressiveness and a crew of harmlessly zany excentrics, we get a couple of wise old men, lots of fables, and the sparkly fog of atmosphere that covers up the fact that none of this stuff goes anywhere. Ian Rankin seems to be the only professional critic willing to point out that "everything which isn't from Alex's point of view somehow falls away."
2.--The voice of "Alex," the Ukrainian translator who narrates most of the present story, relies on the funny, funny device of the malapropism.
The literary tradition of this device is satirical. Bottom, in A Midsummer Night's Dream, gets his line wrong in "Pyramus and Thisby," saying:
Ha, ha! Bottom is such a blockhead that he's calling Thisby hateful instead of perfumed! What an idiot! And then there's Mrs. Malaprop herself--who, like Bottom, pretends to refinements above her station--in Sheridan's The Rivals (1775), one of whose lines goes like this:
Ha, ha! Mrs. Malaprop thinks she's a salon wit, but we all know she's a stupid social pretender!
Would the device have gone over so well if Alex had been an African translator? No? It would have seemed rather callous to make fun of an African's misuse of English? Well, that's because Eastern Europe is funnier--and besides, we liberated them from the Soviets!
Alex's malapropisms are meant to be funny in a kind of wistful way, but I had a hard time forgiving Foer this humor. At the time I was reading lots and lots of ESL papers. Yes, I chortle when I read unintendedly funny malapropisms, but I feel a little cruel doing so. And the techniques Foer used to balance the cruelty of this humorous device are heavy-handed; they're poignant guard-rails, managing the reader's sympathy, making sure the reader doesn't fall off those superior heights.
Would the device have gone over so well if Alex had been an African translator? No? It would have seemed rather callous to make fun of an African's misuse of English? Well, that's because Eastern Europe is funnier--and besides, we liberated them from the Soviets!
3.--Don't get me started on the marketing. That cover. The dance around the "Holocaust Genre." The Wuenderkind of well-connected parents.
Yes, I'm jealous, but I also think Foer has enough talent that he should have started his literary career with a stronger novel. One, perhaps, that wasn't all about him.
[Update 1: The Elegant Variation weighs in with a post that makes me feel bad. At least I took issue with the book more than with the man. Still, I've got to admit that if Foer hadn't been so young and so relentlessly promoted, the book would have fallen into the interesting-but-flawed column for me rather than the I-hate-it-I-hate-it category. ]
[Update 2: Galleycat collects some links that discuss Foer's apparent desire to be compared to black men. And another, rather less involved interview with Foer at CNN, via The Elegant Variation.]
[Update 3: Editor and Punisher discusses similarities between Foer's novel and Beverly Cleary's Dear Mr. Henshaw. (via Gawker.)]
Gawker's take on the interview: Foer as emo-boy.
The Rake's Progress calls reading the profile like drunkenly opening the wrong door at a party.
GalleyCat's first reaction: "Worst...Profile...Ever." And her second reaction: "'Epistolary Climax': Reaction Shot, Take Two." Nathalie stresses Foer's responsibility for Solomon's crush-article and suggests that Foer might have a thing for letter-writing.
The New York Observer speculates about what some of those emails exchanged back-n-forth might have looked like. (via Bookslut)
Maud Newton contains herself to calling the profile "strange" and linking to the Observer piece above.
In the minority, Bookdwarf read the profile as making Foer seem "nice" and "less pretentious than...imagined."
The Elegant Variation is too high-minded to comment on the profile, but I'll link to this post instead, which points out that much of the loathing felt for Foer can be attributed to jealousy. The Literary Saloon is of course above commenting on local gossip. MobyLives doesn't comment, either, which surprises me a little.
__
For myself, I disliked Foer's first book, and I don't think my dislike can be attributed solely to jealousy. Since I helped teach a class on this novel, my dislikes are already organized, and I just have to add bullet points.
1.--The evocation of the village's utopian past in the magical-realist mode seemed hackneyed to me. Is there a way to convey "nostaglia" and "cultural otherness" without slipping into goofy fantasias? I know the "bad" way to evoke past cultural otherness is the exotic or the anthropological, both of which modes the Said school of anti-orientalism have pretty effectively taken apart. But a really good novelist should be able to figure out some new tricks.
Let's see, in Foer's novel we get an absurdist village ritual that marks the local community as absolutely contained in its glorious uniqueness, we get a generational family romance with some delicate sexual transgressiveness and a crew of harmlessly zany excentrics, we get a couple of wise old men, lots of fables, and the sparkly fog of atmosphere that covers up the fact that none of this stuff goes anywhere. Ian Rankin seems to be the only professional critic willing to point out that "everything which isn't from Alex's point of view somehow falls away."
2.--The voice of "Alex," the Ukrainian translator who narrates most of the present story, relies on the funny, funny device of the malapropism.
The literary tradition of this device is satirical. Bottom, in A Midsummer Night's Dream, gets his line wrong in "Pyramus and Thisby," saying:
"'Thisby, the flowers of odious savors sweet.'" (III.i.81)
Ha, ha! Bottom is such a blockhead that he's calling Thisby hateful instead of perfumed! What an idiot! And then there's Mrs. Malaprop herself--who, like Bottom, pretends to refinements above her station--in Sheridan's The Rivals (1775), one of whose lines goes like this:
"Sure, if I reprehend any thing in the world it is the use of my vernacular tongue, and a nice derangement of epithets!"
Ha, ha! Mrs. Malaprop thinks she's a salon wit, but we all know she's a stupid social pretender!
Would the device have gone over so well if Alex had been an African translator? No? It would have seemed rather callous to make fun of an African's misuse of English? Well, that's because Eastern Europe is funnier--and besides, we liberated them from the Soviets!
Alex's malapropisms are meant to be funny in a kind of wistful way, but I had a hard time forgiving Foer this humor. At the time I was reading lots and lots of ESL papers. Yes, I chortle when I read unintendedly funny malapropisms, but I feel a little cruel doing so. And the techniques Foer used to balance the cruelty of this humorous device are heavy-handed; they're poignant guard-rails, managing the reader's sympathy, making sure the reader doesn't fall off those superior heights.
Would the device have gone over so well if Alex had been an African translator? No? It would have seemed rather callous to make fun of an African's misuse of English? Well, that's because Eastern Europe is funnier--and besides, we liberated them from the Soviets!
3.--Don't get me started on the marketing. That cover. The dance around the "Holocaust Genre." The Wuenderkind of well-connected parents.
Yes, I'm jealous, but I also think Foer has enough talent that he should have started his literary career with a stronger novel. One, perhaps, that wasn't all about him.
[Update 1: The Elegant Variation weighs in with a post that makes me feel bad. At least I took issue with the book more than with the man. Still, I've got to admit that if Foer hadn't been so young and so relentlessly promoted, the book would have fallen into the interesting-but-flawed column for me rather than the I-hate-it-I-hate-it category. ]
[Update 2: Galleycat collects some links that discuss Foer's apparent desire to be compared to black men. And another, rather less involved interview with Foer at CNN, via The Elegant Variation.]
[Update 3: Editor and Punisher discusses similarities between Foer's novel and Beverly Cleary's Dear Mr. Henshaw. (via Gawker.)]
Marilee Scott 3:47 PM
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