jonathan safran foer

identity theory | interviews | Robert Birnbaum: "Twenty-six-year-old Jonathan Safran Foer grew up in Washington, DC and attended Princeton University, where he won the Freshman, Sophomore, Junior and Senior Creative Writing Thesis prizes. After graduation he worked at a number of jobs including as a morgue assistant, receptionist, math tutor, ghostwriter and archivist. He was awarded the Zoetrope: All Story Fiction Prize in 2000 and his stories have appeared in The Paris Review and Conjunctions, and he also edited Convergence of Birds, an anthology inspired by Joseph Cornell. In 1999 he went to the Ukraine to research his grandfather's life which, as Foer tells it, resulted (though not planned) in his writing his novel, Everything is Illuminated. Jonathan Safran Foer lives in Brooklyn, NY and is writing his second novel. The softcover edition of Everything Is Illuminated has recently been published with a variety of "eye catching" colored covers, and we talked to Foer as he once more hit the hustings to promote his book.

Everything is Illuminated is the story of a young man named Jonathan Safran Foer's search in the Ukraine for the woman who may or may not have saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Aided in his quest by a 20th century Mr. Malaprop, Alex, (quoting Francine Prose, "Not since Anthony Burgess's novel A Clockwork Orange has the English language been simultaneously mauled and energized with such brilliance and such brio.") and his a dog named Sammy Davis Jr., Jr., and Alex's own grandfather, Foer imagines the history of his grandfather's stetl. There is, of course, a kind of convergence of these poles in the narrative. But, to quote Ms. Prose once again:

"He's got his sights on higher —much higher—things than mere laughs, on a whole series of themes so weighty that any one of them would be enough to give considerable heft to an ordinary novel. A partial list of the books concerns includes: the importance of myths and names, the frailty of memory, the necessity of remembrance, the nature of love, the dangers of secrecy, the legacy of the Holocaust, the value of friendship…and I'm not even mentioning a whole host of subthemes…"