As you know, our research paper and proposal are just lurking around the corner and last class we had the opportunity to learn some nice tricks to maneuvering the library website along with the chance to brainstorm and share research proposals. Unfortunately, due to a ridiculous illness that has just been weighing me down for months, I was unable to attend but fortunately, I have a (possible) proposal; exploring the relationship and representation behind the images in Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. 

I haven’t figured out all the aspects and ways I will go about writing and researching this but I have some sort of idea. Yesterday, along with this morning,  I tried for hours to find scholarly articles and journals so I could begin the research and build a solid foundation, but after endless broken links and misdirected pages, I gave up. My plan was to propose some of the ideas I tried to formulate on here and ask (anyone who takes the time to read this) for their opinion, thoughts, and criticism but since isn’t necessarily possible, I suppose I am here to ask you all this:

What do you think of the images in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close?

Are the pictures random or were they selected carefully?

Do you find any representations (within the images) towards a larger picture?

Obviously, some of the images are purposeful in their placement in the novel like…

Above: Grandpa’s hands

Left: The Falling Man

But there are those (seemingly) random placed pictures so that’s where I want your opinion. What do you think about those “random” images? Do they have a role in the bigger picture?

Images like…

Top Left: Fingerprints

Top Right: Tennis Man

Bottom Left: Humping Turtles (sorry it’s upside-down)

After all the talk and readings about 9/11, the thoughts sort of just become a blur, maybe a bubble, or maybe just a cloud of smoke, just like the one’s from the attack, but none-the-less, they’re dark and gloomy. Upon reading Juliana Spahr’s This Connection of Everyone with Lungs and more specifically, her entry from February 15th, 2003, her attitude of the event completely shifts from passion (derived from frustration and hope) to nonchalant, carelessness. Her entries change from “Beloveds, we do not know how to live our lives with any agency outside of our bed” (26) and “When I speak of feet I speak of attacks conceived in Afghanistan, planned in Germany, funded through Budai, executed in America, using Saudis” (27) to “Of course other things happened… but mainly people gathered” (55). It’s as if she just completely gave up and brought on a entirely new behavior.

Spahr writes “Here is today. Three million in Rome. Two million in Spain. One and a half million in London… The list goes on. Millions. And if not millions, then hundreds of thousands” (53) and then she continues to list at least 90 other cities and countries. She sort of took on an Oskar Schell type vibe with the extensive listings, numbers, and overall; information.

Spahr’s writing style relates to Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close with the endless repetition, listing, precision to facts and information seen on page 73, 49, or/and 51. Foer writes “… I found 472 people… there were 216 different addresses… I calculated that if I went to two every Sunday, which seemed possible, plus holidays, minus Hamlet rehearsals and other stuff… it would take me about three years to go through them all (51).” The confident yet uncaring tone of voice carried by both Spahr and Schell/Foer show the trauma and effects from the attacks on 9/11.