Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

According to my car, it is 108° outside. It has been so hot these last three days that I find myself fairly surprised to still be alive and lucid, having survived the ordeal of simply existing in this heat. On Saturday, I had parked three blocks from my hair salon and had started to walk in the 115° heat. Even in the shade, I could feel my lungs struggling to process the hot air and I swore I could hear my skin sizzling. I turned around, got back in the car, and drove the three blocks to a closer parking space.

Today I have left the office a bit early in a show of support for our air conditioner. The single window unit, which seemed perfectly adequate last year on the two days that were warm enough to necessitate its use, chugged along valiantly all day, ever since the temperature hit 100° at 11:00 this morning. I decided at 4:30 to give it a much deserved rest and I headed to Borders, where the air conditioner is big and strong, and always reliably frigid.

I am in the literature section of the bookstore, where I have been scanning the shelves for inspiration and memories to jump out at me. What did catch my eye was a copy of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated displayed face-out. This edition is the movie tie-in version (not the one I own) featuring Elijah Wood sporting a pair of Magritte-esque glasses.

My first reaction was the same dismay and sadness I feel at all movie tie-in covers. Then I thought, did anyone actually see this movie? Wasn’t it such a dud that they would be better off not using the movie marketing on the cover? Oh, it’s Elijah Wood. People seem to love Elijah Wood these days, even though he doesn’t do anything for me (especially with big hairy hobbit feet).

I have to admit, it did cross my mind to see the movie when it came out. I had read Everything is Illuminated earlier this year and was blown away by every single thing about the experience. I laughed out loud, I cried, I wished it would end quickly and release me from its grip, and I wished it would never end. Foer’s writing was simultaneously literary-clever, gut-splittingly funny, and emotionally mesmerizing, a set of characteristics that aren’t often found tied so closely in postmodern literature.

The book has three interconnected story lines (my favorite type of book). One of the threads is a mythological telling of the main character’s (also named Jonathan Safran Foer) Jewish ancestry. The other two, told from differing points of view, follow Jonathan’s modern-day quest to the Ukraine to find a woman who might have known, and saved, his grandfather during WWII. All three are written in an entirely different vernacular, similar to David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, and Foer has an equally impressive facility with the different voices. More amazingly, his literary cleverness is serves to illuminate the humanity of both the main characters and of an entire village—their deepest joys and sorrows, their needs and wants, and their loves—rather than obscuring it. The threads are perfectly woven and timed to reach their peaks together in an amazingly powerful scene.

So when I read the reviews for the movie version of Everything is Illuminated, I wanted to hear the same great things from the critics, but I didn’t. The trailer I saw showed a comedic scene that was in fact quite funny, but I didn’t want the whole movie to be a funny, watered-down version of the book. I decided that it wasn’t worth the risk. I would rather preserve my memories of this incredible book the way they are in my mind and heart. Besides, I have always found Elijah Wood a little bit creepy—I mean, have you seen Sin City?

Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

tags: books book reviews Holocaust Elijah Wood Jonathan Safran Foer