11 September 2006

An anniversary

Today is an anniversary. While I have some reservations about aspects of its official commemoration, I am impressed by the insistence of some survivors that it be seen as a marking of atrocity everywhere.

My opinions as an outsider are, however, for today at least, beside the point. I shall, therefore, mark the day by recommending a book which I read (by serendipitous chance) today: Extremely loud and incredibly close, by Jonathan Safran Foer.

The protagonist is a nine year old boy, Oskar Schell. Oskar's father died in the WTC on 11th September and, in the months running up to the second anniversary, Oskar struggles to deal with the complex emotions which distort his young life.

As he crisscrosses New York, obsessively compiles scrapbooks or searches the word wide web, and writes to physicist Steven Hawking in search of meaning, he is surrounded by warmth, love and kindness from family and strangers alike. We also discover (though he does not) that his grandparents were survivors of the Dresden firebombing, that their own parents were not, and that their child (Oskar's father) was a survivor of their emotional devastation.

Extremely loud and incredibly close is a hymn to the human spirit, and a condemnation of human violence, whenever and wherever either may be found.

[Post script, Thu 14 Sept '06: since posting this I have discovered Jim Putnam's 11th Sept post which, opening with exactly the same four words, addresses the anniversary more directly.]


  • Foer, J.S., Extremely loud & incredibly close. 2006, London: Penguin. (Original publication 2005, Boston: Houghton Mifflin.)

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