Author Jonathan Safran Foer Says Bestselling Novel Is an Invitation to a Dialogue

Posted Thursday, Jun 6, 2002

Chances are that by now you have heard of Jonathan Safran Foer or his first novel, Everything Is Illuminated (Houghton Mifflin). You may have heard that he wrote this acclaimed, complex novel while still an undergraduate at Princeton, or that the book grew out of a creative writing thesis project advised by Joyce Carol Oates and Jeffrey Eugenides.

You may have read, in one of the many magazine and newspaper profiles of Foer, that many publishers bid on the book and that despite his huge advance, he still lives in his modest Queens, New York, apartment. He is not seen in any glamorous literary hotspots but at the New York Public Library assiduously writing his next book on his laptop computer.

Anything written about the book has included at least one fractured English phrase by Foer’s literary creation, the Ukrainian Alexander Perchov. Although Foer was fast asleep in his bassinet when Steve Martin and Dan Ackroyd swung onto the stage of Saturday Night Live as the immigrant Czech "wild and crazy guys," Foer’s Perchov might have taught them valuable dating tips, since he knows why so many girls "want to be carnal" with him -- because he is a "very premium person to be with. [He is] homely, and also severely funny…" Indeed, severely funny enough to bring many reading attempts to a complete halt.

At the time of the book's publication, Foer summarized it as follows:

In the summer after his junior year at college, Jonathan Safran Foer leaves the ivy of Princeton for the impoverished farmlands of Eastern Europe. Armed with only a photograph of questionable origin, he hopes to find Augustine -- a woman who might, or might not, be a link to a grandfather he never knew. He is guided on his journey by Alexander Perchov, a young Ukrainian translator, poignantly insightful and absurd, who is also searching for a lost family, but, in his case, family that is very much alive and near. What follows is a Quixote-like misadventure, at sharp turns comedic and tragic, which culminates in the most essential existential questions: Who am I? What am I to do?

Woven into this narrative is the novel that Jonathan is working on -- an imagined history of Trachimbrod, the shtetl that he and Alex investigate. As the contemporary section moves back in time, the imagined history moves forward. ‘Reality’ and ‘fiction’ meet at the final scene, when the Germans invade Trachimbrod, and all is, or isn’t, lost.

Everything Is Illuminated is, above all things, about love -- between parent and child; between lovers, friends, and generations; between what happened and what will happen.

Everything Is Illuminated has been an independent booksellers’ favorite, reaching the top of the Book Sense 76 list for May/June 2002. Foer has been on a cross-country author tour, with stops at Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C.; A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books in San Francisco; and Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle, among others. He spoke to BTW by phone from his Queens home.

BTW: In the course of this interview and others, you have mentioned several major sources of inspiration. Understandably, you mention big-name writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, Salman Rushdie, Gabriel Marquez, and Franz Kafka. You also talk about visual artist Joseph Cornell. But your most surprising muse is the one you term the most significant -- your mother’s handmade party invitations.

JSF: My mother made the most elaborate fantastic party invitations when I was a kid. People say that they’ve kept them over the years. They had such an impact on me because I grew up in an environment where value was placed on things that have no real value. She taught me to do something for its own sake. That’s what art is. I see a book as a great big invitation -- not to a party but to a dialogue.

BTW: Everything Is Illuminated is your first novel, but you have edited a book, published just a year ago, titled A Convergence of Birds: Original Fiction and Poetry Inspired by Joseph Cornell (Distributed Art Publishers). Cornell, who lived all his life in your neighborhood of Jackson Heights, Queens, was known for his assemblages of small objects and snippets of printed materials in wooden boxes. The combined effect is poetic, beautiful, and enigmatic, apparently stemming from his unconscious. He is termed a surrealist because the iconography is so completely personal that it is remote. What about Cornell inspired you to persuade 20 well-known literary figures (including Joyce Carol Oates, Paul Auster, Robert Pinsky, and Howard Norman) to contribute the writings that make up the book? And what persuaded them to respond?

JSF: Joseph Cornell tantalized me. He was the most important person to enter my life. What attracted me was what was attractive about it. When I saw his work for the first time, it was a revelation. I didn’t know anything had the power to make me feel the way I did. I didn’t want to be a passive admirer of things. It is rare in this world to encounter something or someone who feels things urgently. The world can feel pretty flat at times. Cornell felt so urgently about things, and I think people responded to the urgency. I was good-natured -- I had no money when I wrote the letters. It was so poorly planned -- a mess. People had a sense of that.

BTW: Did his work also affect Everything Is Illuminated as well?

JSF: In Everything Is Illuminated there, too, are boxes. A lot of the book has to do with a sense of wonder, looking inside of small things, things that open themselves up.

BTW: Apart from the numerous rave reviews, have you been pleased with the reactions to the book?

JSF: I was not anticipating a reaction, it was the farthest thing from my mind. I never thought that I’d have an audience larger than some friends. The book was a means of communicating with people. The book was the middleman -- anyone could invest personally on the other end. It was a revelation when the first real human showed interest. Not a review here and there -- someone sat down and wrote a letter.

Did I believe that people read the book -- and then like the book? It’s like when you really like somebody and they like you back -- why would they?

BTW: Liev Schreiber has bought the film rights to Everything Is Illuminated and is working on a screen adaptation. You just completed a six-city book tour, including visits to high schools in every city. In the fall you begin a 30-city tour through the Jewish Book Council. I’ve read that you’ve completed a draft of your second novel. What’s the next book?

JSF: The Zelnick Museum, set in a fictional contemporary museum devoted to the life of a fictional diarist from the 1930s. He wrote brilliant books and became internationally famous. Then, when the Anne Frank diaries were published, people stopped reading him and the museum fell into disrepair. The book is about the lives that converge there on an afternoon.
--Interviewed by Nomi Schwartz