Reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly, I was reminded of a class I took last year spring semester, Bookish Beasts, a special topics creative writing course taught by Professor Tichy. It was a daunting class, I admit I had no idea it was going be so demanding for imagination and creativity, but I learned that book can be an art form in itself and expressed art/poetry/prose through unconventional book forms. Anyway, I was reminded of this class because this book has many parts where the author takes liberty of breaking conventions we’re used to. And I can heartily side with Nik’s view that it’s sometimes hard to follow (like Oskar’s side-by-side dialogue).
However, I did find it effective at times. One of the things I wanted to direct attention to was pages 203-207 when Oskar is listening on the conversation between his mother and the psychiatrist. In Bookish Beasts we learned a form of poetry called Erasure Poetry (link) which is, in a nutshell, taking a written piece of text and erasing whatever you want and creating a new piece of work out of it. Poet Ronald Johnson turned Milton’s Paradise Lost into an entire erasure work, I think he makes different versions too. This part in the book reminded me of erasure poetry and I don’t know if that’s what the author had in mind since this is his own piece of work. It would be interesting to find out the process behind these pages, I wonder if he wrote a full dialogue – then proceeded to do some erasure on it. Usually, erasure works aim for a completely new meaning that is completely different from the original source. However, in this case, the gist of the complete dialogue is still captured – and the focus on the remaining, broken phrases still convey the tragic tone of this scene if not more powerfully than if the complete dialogue was up here. Things are open for interpretation, like erasure works try to create a whole new meaning but Oskar helplessly can not escape the dialogue going on here like the man in free fall unable to go anywhere but ground below him (the picture in between these pages).
Another thing I learned in Bookish Beasts is that we take form into account for analyzing works. And if we are to take this book as a piece of art in itself then it may shed some light on something I’m digesting: the red ink. I’ve also wondered about the red ink that appears in the letter from Oskar’s grandfather to Oskar’s father. I only recall the red ink being used once before this when Oskar’s father circled a phrase in the newspaper for Oskar as an encouragement/hint for the Reconnaissance Expedition game. So I assumed it was Oskar’s father, the recipient of the letter, who made the red marks – which at first I thought was jarring because the letter contains a narration of personal trauma. I thought this so because I originally thought red marks were correcting grammar and it seemed impersonal, and almost disrespectful to do that on an authentic, unabashed letter. Going along with this, it’s almost as if we’re lifted out of the trauma narrated by the grandfather and neutralized by the red ink, as these are associated with editing papers and the sort – not personal letters. However, what is circled are not always mistakes and this is what throws me off. What does this say of the father? Did Foer intend anything else with this besides simply giving his readers an experience holding the “real” letter? I haven’t finished the book so I assume the father never got a chance to meet Oskar’s grandfather so maybe this is a testament to a lacking of relationship between the Oskar’s father and his father? The distanced, relentless examination and circling of the paper with the bright red ink seems to support this if that is the case. I could be completely wrong, and am very interested in what other people have to say about the red ink.
Great questions about the use of red ink. I’m not sure what to make of those pages either. You’re right that it would seem to be the father making those “edits,” since we see him doing the same earlier. But we can also assume — at least at this point in the novel — that the father never received any such letter, since all the mail his father had sent to Oskar’s grandmother were simply empty envelopes. So the question is, who’s red ink is that? Is it “diegetic,” meaning available to the characters within the novel, or is it “non-diegetic,” something only we the external readers can see? And what difference does it make?