Foer's Tree of Codes

I just finished reading Jonathan Safran Foer's Tree of Codes and it is amazing! To create it, he cut holes in a copy of Bruno Schulz's The Street of Crocodiles so that a new narrative is created, partly from the words remaining on each page, and partly from the resulting combination of words on the page one is reading and later pages that one can see via the holes cut in each page. It is postmodern fiction at its best: a text that questions the concept of the book itself while still being a beautiful work of art that affirms the necessity of narrative for human existence.


It is only 134 pages long, and reads more like a long poem that consists of page-long, haiku-like poems than like prose. There is a basic narrative present, but it is secondary to the physical form of the book, which is just as much a piece of plastic art as it is a piece of literature. It is more empty space than text, and some pages (e.g., 60) are virtually all open space.


Here are three of my favorite page-poems (a full list would be about a third of the book's pages):


"Apart from them, mother and I ambled, guiding our shadows over a keyboard of paving stones. we passed the chemist's large jar of pain. we passed houses," 10
"her boundaries held only loosely, ready to scatter as if smoke. all her complaints, all her worries her no purpose, her eyes reflected the garden" 17
"he spoke almost incoherently. he blinked in the light, spilled darkness at each flutter of the lids. he said he had lost the way and hardly knew how to get back. perhaps the city had ceased to exist" 106


But it is difficult to get the full power of these fragments just from reading them; their physical manifestation is just as important.


One of my favorite aspects of the book is its inclusion of various metafictional statements that reaffirm the slipperiness of what the reader experiences:


"It was a dialogue" 29
"our creations will be temporary" 51
"tree of codes suddenly appears: one can see" 94
"nothing can reach a definite conclusion" 95
"The tree of codes was better than a paper imitation" 96
"Perhaps the spaces suggested by the mind did not exist?" 107 (this one is especially true, as the book is so well-constructed that it is often difficult to discern whether what one is reading is on the current page or a following page)
"The interior formed itself into the panorama of a landscape" 117


Tree of Codes is well worth its $40 cover price (amazon.com has it for $26); it is an essential text. I can't wait to teach it sometime!

Books Acquired Recently

Books Acquired Recently

Bannon, Ann. The Beebo Brinker Chronicles. New York: Quality Paperback Book Club, 1995.


I found this used at Better World Books in Goshen, Indiana. It includes four of Bannon's Beebo Brinker novels: Odd Girl Out (1957), I Am A Woman (1959), Women in the Shadows (1959), and Beebo Brinker (1962). I've read Beebo Brinker before and really enjoyed it because it gives a non-condemning view of lesbianism and is thus an essential early text in LGBT literature. I am a total sucker for omnibus volumes like this one, and it was only $5.98, so I had to buy it even though I am trying not to buy more books before I move at the end of July.


Foer, Jonathan Safran. Tree of Codes. 2nd ed. London: Visual Editions, 2011.


I am so excited to finally get this book! I ordered it in January when I first heard about it, and amazon claimed to have it in stock, but didn't because the first printing (called the first edition by the publisher, and the copy I have is labelled the "second edition" on the copyright page, but as far as I know it is the same text as the first; that is, it should be labelled the "second printing," not "edition") had already sold out. Copies of it were selling for hundreds of dollars. Once the second printing came out amazon fulfilled my order at their original price, $26, which is a great deal since the cover price is $40. I love Foer's work, and I love postmodern fiction, including his, so I am super-excited to see what he does with Tree of Codes, which has cut-outs on every page so that the words from other pages become part of the story of the page one is reading at the moment. It is as much an art object as it is a novel.

The Flying Troutmans

I just finished reading Miriam Toews's novel The Flying Troutmans, and quite enjoyed it. The plot is not especially fascinating (it's a typical "road trip" narrative), but the characters are fantastic. The 11-year-old girl Phebes is especially good. She is a precocious child similar to Oskar in Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (her talents are artistic rather than scientific, though). Her adult-like persona is almost unrealistic at times, but Toews does a good job of mixing in enough childishness to make her believable. Phebes's brother Logan's single-minded devotion to basketball is also well-done, and is somewhat humorous because he's Canadian (Steve Nash notwithstanding).


The pastiche of pop culture references that Toews mixes in is also entertaining because of its highly eclectic nature. It includes Fight Club (109), the Bible (83), Sylvia Plath (167), Scrabble (63), David Bowie (125), the Beatles (83), and James Bond (116) among others. The novel has a postmodern feel despite its realist chronological narrative, in part because of its pastichiness and in part because of its continued emphasis that hoping for centers in human existence is futile: nothing is universal or infallible. It manages to convey this somber message in an enjoyable, often humorous way, though.

"We would have been safe" (and game six)

I just finished re-reading Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close to teach it tomorrow, and even though this was the sixth or seventh time I have read it, the last quarter of the book still makes me cry. It concludes about as happily as it possibly can--Oskar's father is still dead (no magical realism here), but he solves the mystery of the key, he and his mother are reconciled, and he realizes he has to/will be able to move on with his life--though the actual ending is heartwrenching. Oskar's final words, "We would have been safe" (326), signify the final loss of his childhood innocence, which is normally a healthy, important moment of growth. Foer does such a good job of making readers care about Oskar, though, that we hope he can just stay protected and happy forever. Oskar grows up instead, and we are left with the fact that for all of our childhood nostalgia, we live in a world where, as Abby Black says, "people hurt each other" for no good reason, even when we try our best not to (290).


Oskar's last sentence, coupled with the flipbook that shows a body falling back up into the World Trade Center, is also a public lament for Americans' pre-9/11 hopeful naivete that we were somehow in the violent, messy world, but not of it. We all share that desire for safety, but as Oskar says, "In the end, everyone loses everyone" (74), so we must confront the danger and live our lives to the fullest.


Anyway, to cheer myself up I watched the tenth inning of game six from the 1986 World Series. It still always amazes me that the Mets win; I get nervous every time I watch it.


Today I watched both halves of the inning (usually I just watch the bottom half), and it was shocking how much it looks like Boston is destined to win. I can't imagine having watched it as a Red Sox fan. Just before Dave Henderson hits a home run to put Boston ahead, NBC replayed his home run from game five of the ALCS, so it plays like he was pre-ordained to hit another one. Shortly thereafter, there is a shot of Henderson and Bill Buckner with their arms around one another in the dugout, laughing. Later in the inning, Buckner comes up with a runner in scoring position and Rick Aguilera hits him. Buckner glares out toward the mound and the home plate umpire has to get in front of him and guide him toward first base. This reaction is completely ridiculous on Buckner's part because there is no way Aguilera would be throwing at him intentionally. It is like the baseball gods punish Buckner for his reaction in the bottom half of the inning. As gods are wont to do, their punishment far outweighs the crime.


My favorite part of the bottom half of the inning* is Ray Knight screaming with joy to the heavens (I use this term intentionally--Knight explicitly thanks "the good Lord" in his post-game interview with Marv Albert [so does Mookie Wilson]) as his teammates mob him after he scores the winning run. It looks like he is barely able to breathe, like he is drowning in a sea of Mets. It is also wonderful how once the run crosses the plate Vin Scully stops talking and just lets the crowd noise and the camera shots speak for themselves.


* For those of you unfamiliar with the bottom half of the inning, here's a re-creation of it using the old Nintendo game RBI Baseball with the original NBC audio:

Thoughts on Re-Reading

Later this afternoon I am going to begin re-reading Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses for the first time since I bought it at the Strand (12th and Broadway in NYC) in summer 2003. I claim Rushdie as one of my favorite authors, but I haven't actually read any of his work since reading Midnight's Children in late 2005. Thus I am excited to get back to him.


I have done hardly any re-reading over the past seven years while I've been in graduate school (except in those instances where a book was assigned in several of my classes or I assigned a book to my classes multiple times [e.g., Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close], and also when studying for my Ph.D. exams) because I have not had the time. This is a practice that I miss, because I almost always find that I gain new insights into a text the second (or third, etc.) time around. I like the idea of having a set of texts that one returns to for sustenance throughout one's life as reminders for who one is and where one finds beauty in the world. Religious persons would use the term "sacred texts" to label what I am describing, and I like this term even though I am not religious and don't really care whether a "God" exists (actions are what is important, not whether some unprovable supernatural being is out there or not) because it signifies the idea that some texts help us experience the sublime, the beauty of the world (which are both important concepts for secular folks to claim) better than others.


Texts that have played this "sacred" role for me in the past and that I wish I had time now to re-read, but do not, include Chaim Potok's My Name is Asher Lev, Rudy Wiebe's The Blue Mountains of China, Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov, and Di Brandt's poetry. Two authors that I have been able to re-read and continue to re-read as I have the time are Walt Whitman and Samuel R. Delany, both of whom I try to teach whenever possible. In Whitman's case, it's much easier to find time to re-read a poem or two (or a section of "Song of Myself" as the case may be) than a novel.


Part of what makes it so difficult to re-read is that I am always finding new books to read as well. I have at least a dozen new books on my shelf (mostly novels) waiting for me. Certainly my book-buying addiction does not lend itself to contemplative returns to old friends.


Also, sometimes I love parentheses a little too much.

The Beatles and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

One of my favorite aspects about Oskar in Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close is his love for the Beatles, which I share. Oskar randomly mentions Beatles songs throughout the narrative (including some fairly obscure ones), but there are two that are especially important for understanding his mental state througout the book (as opposed to, say, "Yellow Submarine" [1]). They occur in the same sentence, just before Oskar checks the phone messages on 9/11 that have been left by his soon-to-be-dead father (14).


The first song is "Fixing a Hole" (off of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, probably the least well-known song Oskar references--one has to be familiar with the album to know it). This one is rather obvious: throughout the novel Oskar is attempting to "fix the hole" left inside of him after his father's death so he can move on with his life. The song itself is a rather hopeful one because the speaker is having success fixing the hole, but Oskar has no idea how to begin this process. He simply falls into it once he discovers the key in his father's closet and begins searching for its lock.


The second song is "I Want to Tell You" (off of Revolver, an underrated album as far as it is possible for Beatles albums to be underrated). Oskar desperately needs someone to talk to, he "wants to tell" someone about his pain, and he does so to the reader in his rapid-fire almost stream-of-consciousness narration, but what he really wants is to be able to talk with his dead father, and, since that is impossible, to his mother, from whom he feels alienated. But "When [she's] here / All those words, they seem to slip away." He doesn't know how to break down the barrier between them, and she doesn't either. It is not until the end of the book that they slowly begin to communicate again.