My school brings an awful lot of interesting speakers to campus. And, since these assemblies are mandatory, people actually go see these very interesting speakers.
GA kicked off this year's speakers with Jonathan Safran Foer the author of this year's mandatory summer reading: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. And, while he's a good speaker, he's a little full of himself. Personally, I think he gets to be a little full of himself having had stories published in The New Yorker and in The Paris Review and having become the author of a best seller at 25, but he still seemed a little over full of himself. Two years ago we had John Irving come to talk to us and he was definitely full of himself, but he's published 19 novels and they're not exactly light weight novels either. He was totally justified in thinking he was awesome. Foer might have a bit of an inflated opinion of himself.
One of the interesting features of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is what I'll call "stylized pages". By "stylized pages", I mean he includes pictures, pages with one word or one sentence, and pages with so much text that it becomes a black square surrounded by white margins. It becomes a very quick read. So I asked him why he had chosen to put pictures in. There was a Q&A session at the end, so I took the opportunity. His answer was "because I like it that way". Hmm...
That was basically his answer to every question that had to do with the book. He did things because he wanted to. According to him he wouldn't care if one of his books was a flop because he had published a thing that he liked. I can't tell if this is admirable or ass-hat-tastic. On the one hand, he clearly has an artistic vision. On the other hand, he sounds ridiculously pompous.
Setting that aside, he was quite a good speaker. He believes in interpretation and the idea that there isn't one right answer about a novel. I think this is nice since I've had one too many English teacher that presumed to know everything possible about literature. And he told stories that had a point (unlike Mark Salzman three years ago who told stories of his epileptic dog shitting everywhere in his Colorado home) and that were well told. He was good to listen to and I didn't feel like I wasted my time, which is always nice.
GA kicked off this year's speakers with Jonathan Safran Foer the author of this year's mandatory summer reading: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. And, while he's a good speaker, he's a little full of himself. Personally, I think he gets to be a little full of himself having had stories published in The New Yorker and in The Paris Review and having become the author of a best seller at 25, but he still seemed a little over full of himself. Two years ago we had John Irving come to talk to us and he was definitely full of himself, but he's published 19 novels and they're not exactly light weight novels either. He was totally justified in thinking he was awesome. Foer might have a bit of an inflated opinion of himself.
One of the interesting features of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is what I'll call "stylized pages". By "stylized pages", I mean he includes pictures, pages with one word or one sentence, and pages with so much text that it becomes a black square surrounded by white margins. It becomes a very quick read. So I asked him why he had chosen to put pictures in. There was a Q&A session at the end, so I took the opportunity. His answer was "because I like it that way". Hmm...
That was basically his answer to every question that had to do with the book. He did things because he wanted to. According to him he wouldn't care if one of his books was a flop because he had published a thing that he liked. I can't tell if this is admirable or ass-hat-tastic. On the one hand, he clearly has an artistic vision. On the other hand, he sounds ridiculously pompous.
Setting that aside, he was quite a good speaker. He believes in interpretation and the idea that there isn't one right answer about a novel. I think this is nice since I've had one too many English teacher that presumed to know everything possible about literature. And he told stories that had a point (unlike Mark Salzman three years ago who told stories of his epileptic dog shitting everywhere in his Colorado home) and that were well told. He was good to listen to and I didn't feel like I wasted my time, which is always nice.
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