Post 9/11 Books Part 2 / Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

I just finished reading this book, published in 2005. It deserves a second read, so I may update this post at some point, but my first reaction is to marvel at the accomplishment of this novel. The author, Jonathan Safran Foer, weaves together three broken lives in engrossing detail, giving each character specific idiosyncracies that are both maddening and heartbreaking. The star of the show is Oskar Schell, an overly precocious, near-obsessive-compulsive eight-year-old whose father is killed on 9/11. His grandmother and grandfather also narrate portions of the novel, and their grief at losing their son, as well as their shared grief from living through the Dresden firebombing of World War II, is expressed powerfully in those chapters. But Oskar's grief and pain, together with his multifaceted attempts to put the pieces of his life back together, drive the story forward. The story centers around Oskar's quest to find a lock that fits a key he has found in secret, which he believes will tell him more about his father. The quest takes him to many places in New York, but the story doesn't dwell on the "I love NY" theme, it only uses New York as a patchwork background that adds interest in a primarily internal struggle. Oskar's quest is successful in many ways, although the key does not lead him in a direction that he expects; he makes friends, he meets people. Still, he is haunted by his father's death, and his grief is being worked out in the search for the lock. The grandfather character is another key in the story, and his presence becomes essential to Oskar working out his grief, though it is possible that in the end, neither of them achieves the emotional release they need. One very definite theme of the novel is to express the grief created by 9/11 and place it in both a personal and a historical context. The author achieves that goal while at the same time being bold and adventurous in the design and verbal inventiveness of the book. Foer is Vonnegut's heir in more ways than one here, and he is up to the challenge of taking Vonnegut's mantle on into the future.

Post 9/11 Books Part I / In the Shadow of No Towers

I've read three books that I highly recommend that address the emotional landscape created after September 11. They each stake out different territory, and they all do it with intelligence and insight. I am reviewing them in the order in which they were published.

The first is In the Shadow of No Towers, by Art Spiegelman, which came out in 2004. It is a graphic autobiography, meaning it has the look of a hardbound comic book but very personal subject matter. Spiegelman expresses the shock, horror, and outrage of someone who can't understand the attack or the policies that he feels provoked it. He feels betrayed by his country, and sees President Bush as recklessly endangering American citizens, especially New Yorkers, by launching the war on terror. The graphic book makes a gradual shift from these present-day anxieties to the ancient-seeming comics of the early 20th Century, concluding with a section that reverts back to the form of those comic strips completely. This last section is dense and difficult to get through, but overall the book is worth it because of its artistic integrity and outsider's perspective. It doesn't feel like a lecture, but it is definitely a wake-up call to those who feel safe years after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Namesake

This Jhumpa Lahiri novel goes nowhere fast. Again, I found my attention wandering as I got into the first few chapters and never really finished the book. I bought the book because I had read and liked a version of this novel that appeared as a short story in the New Yorker. That story was a stereotypical New Yorker short story, but at least it crystallized the meandering descriptions of this novel into something resembling a plot. This novel seems to have padded that story to interminable length, delving into mysterious realms that have little bearing on real life. Sorry, but my limited attention span couldn't bear the long-windedness of this novel. Maybe if I had nothing but leisure time I could recommend this novel, but it's just not that absorbing of a novel, so maybe no matter how much time I had, it wouldn't be worth it. Not recommended (again, even though I only read the first few chapters).

Hamlet

My wife and I read this classic together for a World Lit class she was taking. It really is a meditation on death and a powerful statement about the nature of human consciousness -- we can be a vacillating, revenge-driven, half-mad species, and Hamlet exposes some of our weaknesses as well as our greatest strengths. "Conscience does make cowards of us all." The great graveyard scene is to me the emotional climax of the play, where two men compete over the memory of a beloved sister and (for lack of a better word) lover. Hamlet intentionally distances himself from Ophelia, but his "antic disposition" is overcome in the graveyard scene when he wallows in his grief. This is a true grief, not an acted one, but Hamlet is the ultimate actor's role because he is both a director and an actor within the play itself. There is an insecurity to the role that is mystifying to some but powerful to others. Hamlet can sound like a whiny teenager at times, but he is capable of showing great resolve and emotional fortitude in others. It's well worth reading this play to get back to a sense of what it means to be human and to encounter such a compelling character.

The Da Vinci Legacy

This was written before the Da Vinci Code became a big hit, but I think it's being repackaged as an answer to the Da Vinci Code. I couldn't get into it while reading it last spring, because the writing is pretty generic. The opening line, after all, is, "Killing made him happy." This kind of sociopath is a staple of 1980s movies, maybe, but it reads false to me. It sounds even more cartoonish than the bad guys in Da Vinci Code, who at least had a powerful motive besides simply enjoying killing. I can't really recommend the book or not recommend the book because I haven't read the whole thing, but based on the opening two chapters, it's a non-starter for me.

Small Avalanches and other stories

Joyce Carol Oates has an ax to grind in this set of stories, but it may be an ax worth grinding. The stories are vivid and well-imagined, and I wish some of my high school students who are girls somehow find this book and read it, because it is a valuable study in conflicts they probably feel. The collection deals mostly with early relationships between guys and girls and the potentially terrifying outcomes of those relationships, meaning sexual violence or date rape.

Taken together, the stories seem to rule out the possibility of the "good guy." Guys reading the stories are likely to be depressed or angry because guys are not presented in a good light, generally speaking.

Still, it's hard to argue that guys don't deserve this kind of treatment. Date rape is an ugly reality, and it's brave in some ways for Oates to present a collection of stories that centers around that reality.

It would be nice, though, if at least one of the stories ended well. I'm not sure if that's the case -- I didn't read through the entire collection.

The Motive

This is a murder mystery by John Lescroart that I really liked right up until the end. The plot starts with a fire in a famous San Francisco home that is being renovated, where two bodies are discovered. The first few chapters lay out the police and fire inspectors' procedures while pointing toward possible suspects. The investigation proceeds along several different avenues, eventually involving the main character, lawyer Dismas Hardy, as the case heads toward trial. I loved the mature characterization of Dismas Hardy as a veteran lawyer with a blessed family life and good friendships. I also enjoyed trying to figure out where the investigation was heading, which I'm never very good at anyway, but it was fun to try. The ending, though, was a little disappointing. It seemed too little justification for all the suspense leading up to it. I know that's vague, but I recommend reading the book, so I'm not going to give away the ending.

Da Vinci Code

I read this novel very quickly and defensively, to be honest, because it includes an attack on some fundamental aspects of Christian religion. The story is well developed, although the bad guys are an obvious caricature of a real-life Catholic sect. I love the idea of using art as a tool to solve a murder, and an alternate version of Christ's life and history would create a strong motive for the bad guys. So the book is good, if it is taken as a simple mystery story.

The book fundamentally misunderstands Christ's significance and the role of the church in society, though. Biblically speaking, the church is designed to be the body of Christ. As such, it should strive to be fundamentally open to all sinners who acknowledge the need for a savior. The church is imperfect at this mission, but it is far from being the secret mafia that the Da Vinci Code makes it out to be. Furthermore, Christ was not just a man, he was the embodiment of God on Earth, completely human and completely divine. The Da Vinci Code wants to treat Christ as if he were simply human, and substitutes any divine characteristics he might have with the pagan symbology of male and female gods and goddesses. It creates a false version of Christ, which is no different than other versions that have been around for centuries, if not millennia.

The attractiveness of the other versions of Christ is that they are different, but I know that Christ was indeed both human and divine. He is the only living God, who was made flesh, crucified for the sins of the world, and rose again. The authority he has in heaven and earth is demonstrated in the true Biblical accounts of Christ. I know this is "accepted dogma," but that doesn't make it any less true.

The Da Vinci Code, for all its inventiveness, does not fundamentally offer anything new to discredit the Christian religion. It is a good read, but I would warn against reading it anyone who has never encountered the living God or who has not read the full Biblical accounts of Christ's life, death, and resurrection. The false version of Christ in the Da Vinci Code is enough to warrant a "thumbs down" recommendation from me.