Word: foer
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...have questioned his decision to take on something so weighty, deriding his ambition and branding the attempt contrived, but in Foer’s view, it would have been contrived not to write about 9/11 given how much of his thoughts it was taking up. Honesty is always best, Foer said in an interview last Thursday from his hotel room in Boston’s Four Seasons, and novelists are not doing anyone any favors by pretending that they weren’t affected by the attacks...
...Foer was in Boston on account of his book tour, which took him to a sold-out Brattle Theatre last Wednesday for a reading and a Q&A sponsored by Harvard Bookstore. Answering questions from wide-eyed teenagers and aspiring writers, Foer spoke softly and calmly from his podium, giving humble advice and doing his best to explain his method in specific terms. Most of the time, he was unable to pin it down, emitting vague but well-intentioned platitudes about “hard work” and “creating empathy.” He has trouble...
...just feels like one big lie, and I can’t figure out why it does,” Foer said in our interview. “Then, when I throw my voice, when I speak as someone who’s quite different from me, it starts to feel very authentic...
...Everything Is Illuminated,” his continued reluctance to just be himself, instead of impersonating a grandmother, a young child, or a goofy foreigner as he has done so far, has gotten frustrating. Instead of writing about what 9/11 was like for him, in other words, which Foer feels incapable of doing, he chose the nine-year-old Oskar Schell, whose father was killed during a meeting at the Windows of the World restaurant. Foer presumes that he knows how it would feel, and although he may come close (most of us are fortunate enough not to know...
...goal in life to narrate as myself,” Foer told his audience at the Brattle. “I’m infinitely jealous of people who have diaries that they believe in, and feel like are expressions of who they are. I’ve tried many many times and every time I sit down to write, it sounds totally inauthentic. Sometimes you have to make something unrealistic in order to make it believable, as I aspire to in my book...