everything is illuminated. jonathan safran foer. (38)

i first read "everything is illuminated" back in 2005.  i read somewhere that elijah wood was making a movie based on it, so i decided to read the book before the movie came out.  however, after reading the book i could not imagine someone capturing the beauty of it in a film, so i decided to not watch the film.  i knew the film would break my heart and disappoint me.  (check out my blog on the movie version.)

i loved this book the first time i read it.  and after my re-reading, i can add it to my list of favorite books of all time.  there is so much that i loved about this book and when i re-read it, it was just as good the second time around.  

the novel is the story of jonathan safran foer's (the protagonist and the author have the same name) search for a woman, augustine.  augustine is a woman in a photo that his left to him by his grandfather.  it is assumed that the woman helped him escape nazis and so foer goes on a search for her.  this is the basis and i would go into more detail but i want you to check it out and i don't want to spoil it for you.

first and foremost i loved reading alex's narrative because of his poor yet clever english.  the best description of his english was written by francine prose for a new york times review, "not since anthony burgess's novel 'a clockwork orange' has the english lesson been simultaneously mauled and energized with such brilliance and such brio."  (i think this is on the back cover.)  alex really does butcher the english lesson but it was done brilliantly.  and just as i loved picking up the slang of that alex and his gang, i loved reading alex's bad yet clever translations.  

alex's vocabulary:

dub-  nickname:  ". . . my many friends dub me Alex"

spleening- to make angry:  "If you want to know why I always spleening her, it is because I am always elsewhere with friends, and disseminating so much currency . . ."

to be carnal- to have sex:  "Many girls want to be carnal with me in many good arrangements, notwithstanding the Inebriated Kangaroo, the Gorky Tickle and the Unyielding Zookeeper.

miniature-  little:  "I have a miniature brother . . ."

promenading- walking:  " . . . Father dubs him Clumsy One, because he is always promenading into things."

the novel is divided into two narratives, alex's letters to jonathan about the search for augustine and jonathan's family history.  as much as i loved reading alex's letters to jonathan, i looked forward to reading the sections written by jonathan.  jonathan writes about this ancestors and their lives in trachimbrod before the nazis come.  his family history is a delight to read because they are like myths and with foer's (the actual author) colorful language, there is an element of magic to them.  

my favorite myths were:

the celebration of trachimday and how they would recreate the day that trachim b died and brod was found.

tale of the dial.  which is actually a gold cast of jonathan's great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, who while working in a mill has a saw lodged into his head.  his statue becomes a symbol of good luck and young men pay tribute to him on their wedding day.

the wisps of ardisht.  which are a clan that are worried about running out of matches, which would prevent them from smoking cigarettes until a child figures that one cigarette can light another which results in a smoking schedule.

one myth that kinda grossed me out was, safran, jonathan's grandfather and his wimpy arm.  his arm didn't gross me out but his sex life that started at the age of 10 grossed me out.  

i also loved the list of the 613 sadnesses which were found on brod's body.  my two favorite sadnessws were the "sadness of could-have-been" and "sadness of love without a release" (i feel like this one would be a great band name.)

here is an excerpt from that part:

The following encyclopaedia of sadness was found on the body of Brod D. The original 613 sadnesses, written in her diary, corresponded to the 613 commandments of our (not their) Torah. Shown below is what was salvageable after Brod was recovered. (Her diary’s wet pages printed the sadnesses onto her body. Only a small fraction [55] were legible. The other 558 sadness are lost forever, and it is hoped that, without knowing what they are, no one will have to experience them.) The diary from which they came was never found.

SADNESSES OF THE BODY: Mirror sadness; Sadness of [looking] like or unlike one’s parents; Sadness of not knowing if your body is normal; Sadness of knowing your [body is] not normal; Sadness of knowing your body is normal; Beauty sadness; Sadness of m[ake]up; Sadness of physical pain; Pins-and-[needles sadness]; Sadness of clothes [sic]; Sadness of the quavering eyelid; Sadness of a missing rib; Noticeable sad[ness]; Sadness of going unnoticed; The sadness of having genitals that are not like those of your lover; The sadness of having genitals that are like those of your lover; Sadness of hands…..
SADNESSES OF THE COVENANT: Sadness of God’s love; Sadness of God’s back [sic]; Favourite-child sadness; Sadness of b[ein]g sad in front of one’s God; Sadness of the opposite of belief [sic]; Sadness of God alone in heaven; Sadness of a God who would need people to pray to him….
SADNESSES OF THE INTELLECT: Sadness of being misunderstood [sic]; Humor sadness; Sadness of love wit[hou]t release; Sadne [ss of be] ing smart; Sadness of not knowing enough words to [express what you mean]; Sadness of having options; Sadness of wanting sadness; Sadness of confusion; Sadness of domes[ti]cated birds; Sadness of fini[shi]ng a book; Sadness of remembering; Sadness of forgetting; Anxiety Sadness…
INTERPERSONAL SADNESSES: Sadness of being sad in front of one’s parent; Sa[dn]ness of false love; Sadness of love [sic]; Friendship sadness; Sadness of a bad convers[at]ion; Sadness of the could-have-been; Secret sadness….
SADNESSES OF SEX AND ART: Sadness of arousal being an unordinary physical state; Sadness of feeling the need to create beautiful things;…Kissing Sadness; Sadness of moving too quickly; Sadness of not mo[vi]ng; Nude model sadness; Sadness of portraiture…..

(see how brillant and clever it is.  you need to check it out.)

without spoiling it for anyone, the story of alex's grandfather was so sad.  it is easy to judge however to be in that situation, i'm not sure many of us have the courage to do the right thing.  it is also a demonstration of what a challenging and horrible time in history the holocaust was.  it made monsters out of average people. 

i could go on and on about how great this book, is but i think i would give away too much.  i would also have quote after quote to the point where the blog would pretty much be just the book.  so i will stop here and just encourage you to read it.  it really is an amazing book and i love it dearly and know that you will love it dearly too.

quotations:

"if there is no love in the world, we will make a new world, and we will give it walls, and we will furnish it with soft, red interiors, from the inside out, and give it a knocker that resonates like a diamond falling to a jeweller's felt so that we should never hear it. love me, because love doesn't exist, and i have tried everything that does."

"one day you will do things for me that you hate. that is what it means to be family."

"the more you love someone, he came to think, the harder it is to tell them. it surprised him that strangers didn't stop each other on the street to say i love you."

"the only thing more painful than being an active forgetter is to be an inert rememberer."

"from space, astronauts can see people making love as a tiny speck of light. not light, exactly, but a glow that could be confused for light - a coital radiance that takes generations to pour like honey through the darkness to the astronaut's eyes."