Word: foer
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...golden when it comes to creativity, there’s a good reason why aspiring writers are always instructed to write what they know—to mine their own lives for inspiration instead of trying to concoct some purely foreign, purely fictional world which they have never experienced. Foer ignores this advice demonstratively. Unconcerned with believability, he says, and unafraid to try to say something new about the Dresden firebombing and the Nazi invasion of Europe, Foer does just about everything in his two books besides show what it’s like...
...Everything Is Illuminated” succeeds in spite of this gimmick. But this success is not sustainable. Until Foer gets comfortable in his own shoes, he won’t be able to transcend mere impersonation, and his characters will forever feel slightly inhuman. Throwing his voice is not a solution, but a shortcut, and the more he allows himself to take it, the less likely it is that he’ll be able to communicate his feelings with the directness he strives...
Granted, “Extremely Loud” had a lot to live up to—a curse on any sophomore effort that is made only worse by the fact that Foer, on account of his young age, is expected to outdo himself with every successive outing. When the debut was published, he was heralded in the press as a “certified wunderkind” and an “obvious talent,” while the book itself was uniformly dubbed “impressive”—a dubious honor which implies, like...
...It’s wonderful to think that the very young Jonathan Safran Foer...can be writing so well and with such lofty aspiration,” wrote Adam Begley of the New York Observer. “It will be wonderful if he writes many more books...
...glowing reviews were indeed widespread, but they were always accompanied by that caveat—that Foer was a young kid yet, and that his best work was ahead of him. Most likely true—Foer himself says that he’d hate to fulfill his potential so early in life—but one might expect him to wilt at the immense pressure of unbounded expectation...