"Living Life is Scarier Than Death."
I just finished one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. After what I thought was fairly disappointing book (Everything is Illuminated), Jonathan Safran Foer has delivered a beautiful second novel. A story of loss and how to cope with it, “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close” is a book everyone should read.
The story is set in the eyes of a young child looking for answers after the devastating events of 9/11 that left his father dead. The reader is taken into the insecure innocence we all felt we had and had also lost after the horrible events of that day. We would never be the same again and there was no denying the troubling state of the world but we were also so helpless and in many ways searching for answers like a child with no parent to look up to.
For those of you that have read “Illuminated” it may have seemed frustrating dealing with the dueling narratives of the past and present lives that we were learning about. In this book Foer uses the same sort of device by unveiling certain mysteries about the plot through the use of different narratives coexisting. The way he does it though is so beautiful and so creative that by the end of the book I just sat in silence for a few minutes soaking up what I had just finished.
Searching for answers through loss is sometimes an impossible effort but the boy that searches through this book does so with such fortitude and strength he makes the adults around him seem almost lost in their maturity. A testament to the idea that we all must search for our own answer and our own truths at any cost, this book is stunning.
Somehow I feel like this really tied into the play that I saw the other day as well. “Faith Healer” is a complex story that on the surface may seem simple but turns into an existential investigation the deeper and deeper you get into it. As sad as this is to say it was my first experience seeing a straight play on Broadway. I may be the king of musicals but something has always kept me away from straight theater. After seeing this though my views have been completely changed. I was left pondering every aspect of this play for days afterwards.
A series of monologues, “Faith Healer” is created with such beauty and pain that there is no way I could grasp all of it on a first viewing. It tells the story of a man who travels around Ireland reviving people’s faith. Those who have been wounded emotionally or physically seek him out, as he says, not to validate the idea there IS hope but to validate the fact that there is NO hope. In our outward search for happiness are we all just searching for validation that things really are as bad as they seem?
Not one of the three actors ever appears on stage at the same time but we hear the same several stories recounted by the faith healer, his wife and his manager. They all mold each event to fit into their consciousnesses idea of what is right. The wife keeps repeating the fact that after their separation that she is okay even though it is obvious she is not. The manager keeps denying the fact that he was emotionally attached to either of them even though it is obvious that he loved both of them deeply. They create these lies to heal themselves. In the end though these lies hurt them more deeply than the truth does. It made me look at my own life and observe what events I bend the truth of. It’s easier to blame factors outside of yourself than to place the blame within your own being.
Both of these works, the book and the play, deal with the idea of loss. From physical loss to emotional loss and everything in between, they were both created with such intensity and spirit behind them. While Foer’s book looks to find the lightness after the darkness, the play burrows itself deep into our psyches and forces you to face darkness you wish did not exist. We all always wish we could change things but denial will never get anyone anywhere. Go and see “Faith Healer” with the brilliant performance from Ralph Fiennes, Cherry Jones and Ian McDiarmid as soon as you have a chance and afterwards run to the bookstore and pick up “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”. You won’t regret it.
The story is set in the eyes of a young child looking for answers after the devastating events of 9/11 that left his father dead. The reader is taken into the insecure innocence we all felt we had and had also lost after the horrible events of that day. We would never be the same again and there was no denying the troubling state of the world but we were also so helpless and in many ways searching for answers like a child with no parent to look up to.
For those of you that have read “Illuminated” it may have seemed frustrating dealing with the dueling narratives of the past and present lives that we were learning about. In this book Foer uses the same sort of device by unveiling certain mysteries about the plot through the use of different narratives coexisting. The way he does it though is so beautiful and so creative that by the end of the book I just sat in silence for a few minutes soaking up what I had just finished.
Searching for answers through loss is sometimes an impossible effort but the boy that searches through this book does so with such fortitude and strength he makes the adults around him seem almost lost in their maturity. A testament to the idea that we all must search for our own answer and our own truths at any cost, this book is stunning.
Somehow I feel like this really tied into the play that I saw the other day as well. “Faith Healer” is a complex story that on the surface may seem simple but turns into an existential investigation the deeper and deeper you get into it. As sad as this is to say it was my first experience seeing a straight play on Broadway. I may be the king of musicals but something has always kept me away from straight theater. After seeing this though my views have been completely changed. I was left pondering every aspect of this play for days afterwards.
A series of monologues, “Faith Healer” is created with such beauty and pain that there is no way I could grasp all of it on a first viewing. It tells the story of a man who travels around Ireland reviving people’s faith. Those who have been wounded emotionally or physically seek him out, as he says, not to validate the idea there IS hope but to validate the fact that there is NO hope. In our outward search for happiness are we all just searching for validation that things really are as bad as they seem?
Not one of the three actors ever appears on stage at the same time but we hear the same several stories recounted by the faith healer, his wife and his manager. They all mold each event to fit into their consciousnesses idea of what is right. The wife keeps repeating the fact that after their separation that she is okay even though it is obvious she is not. The manager keeps denying the fact that he was emotionally attached to either of them even though it is obvious that he loved both of them deeply. They create these lies to heal themselves. In the end though these lies hurt them more deeply than the truth does. It made me look at my own life and observe what events I bend the truth of. It’s easier to blame factors outside of yourself than to place the blame within your own being.
Both of these works, the book and the play, deal with the idea of loss. From physical loss to emotional loss and everything in between, they were both created with such intensity and spirit behind them. While Foer’s book looks to find the lightness after the darkness, the play burrows itself deep into our psyches and forces you to face darkness you wish did not exist. We all always wish we could change things but denial will never get anyone anywhere. Go and see “Faith Healer” with the brilliant performance from Ralph Fiennes, Cherry Jones and Ian McDiarmid as soon as you have a chance and afterwards run to the bookstore and pick up “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close”. You won’t regret it.
posted by M at 4:35 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home