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Jonathan Safran Foer

Jonathan Safran Foer. Major Works. Novels: Everything Is Illuminated (2002) Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005) Tree of Codes (2011) Non-fiction: Eating Animals (2009) Short Stories: “A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease” ( The New Yorker, 2002) “Cravings”

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Jonathan Safran Foer

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  1. Jonathan SafranFoer

  2. Major Works • Novels: • Everything Is Illuminated (2002) • Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005) • Tree of Codes (2011) • Non-fiction: • Eating Animals (2009) • Short Stories: • “A Primer for the Punctuation of Heart Disease” (The New Yorker, 2002) • “Cravings” • "About the Typefaces Not Used in This Edition" (The Guardian, 2002) • "Room After Room" (included in Granta’sBest of Young American Novelists 2,"Granta 97" published in 2007) • "Rhoda" (published in The Book of Other People, 2008) • "Here We Aren't, So Quickly" (The New Yorker, 2010) • Other: • "A Beginner's Guide to Hanukkah", The New York Times (December 22, 2005) Op-ed piece • "My Life as a Dog", The New York Times (November 27, 2006) Op-ed piece

  3. Biography: Family • Born: Feb. 21, 1977 in Washington D.C. • Parents: • Albert Foer (a lawyer) • Esther SafranFoer (president of a public-relations company). • Middle child of three brothers: • Franklin Foer (former editor of TheNew Republic. Wrote a book on soccer and globalization) • Joshua Foer (freelance journalist and author of recent book, Moonwalking with Einstein, about memory) (Solomon) Jonathan and Joshua building a sukkha (sacred Jewish structure) in JSF’s backyard in Brooklyn.

  4. Jewish Roots Grandfather: Louis Safran, was a Polish Jew who lived through the Holocaust and the extermination of his first wife and young daughter. Safran immigrated to this country after the war, but Foer never met him because Louis Safran died in 1954. JSF’s attempts to connect to Louis Safran and research his past become a catalyst for his first attempt at a novel. (Solomon)

  5. Biography: Family Part 2 Wife: Nicole Krauss (equally brilliant contemporary author: The History of Love, Great House) Two sons (both young) Dog: George (“a Great Dane/Lab/pit/greyhound/ridgeback/whatever mix—a.k.a. Brooklyn shorthair”) Home: Park Slope (Brooklyn, NY)

  6. College Life and Becoming a Writer Went to Princeton and majored in philosophy Took a class with Joyce Carol Oates who was a major influence on him. She was the first to urge him to become a writer: JSF: “She wrote a letter to my house in DC during one break, and she said, ‘We talked a lot about your work in the context of the class and now I would like to talk about it a little more personally.’ I can practically recite it, ‘You appear to have a very strong and promising talent coupled with that most important of writerly qualities, energy.’ And man is she right! Energy is the most important writerly quality. In any case, she gave me a reading list. It was a very Joyce Carol Oates thing to do. She gave me suggestions for what avenues to pursue. And somebody took me seriously. It was a revelation for me. The revelation was not just that—the smaller revelation was that a writer of Joyce's caliber would like my writing. The much larger revelation was that there was such a thing as my writing. It had never occurred to me.” (“Jonathan SafranFoer” )

  7. Personal Discovery in the Ukraine After his sophomore year at Princeton, JSF traveled to the Ukraine with a photograph of his grandfather (Louis Safran) and a young woman who supposedly saved his grandfather during the Holocaust (just like the character of JSF in EII). He spent four days travelling in the Ukraine and then 10 weeks writing in Prague. In those 10 weeks, JSF produced a draft of the novel, Everything is Illuminated, which turned into his senior thesis at Princeton and was ultimately published (after multiple revisions in 2002. (“Everything is Illuminated: Jonathan SafranFoer”)

  8. Why Become a Writer? When asked about why he chose to write his first novel/become a novelist instead of pursuing another form: “It wasn’t conscious. I didn’t intend to write any specific kind of novel. And I didn’t intend to write a novel. What I wanted was…I felt very strongly that there were things on the inside of me that I wanted to have on the outside of me…and more than wanted, I felt like I needed it. And without wondering just what form that vent would take that would allow these things from the inside out, I went ahead and I tried. And this is what happened. And I think if I had thought about it, I would have created something else.” (“Everything is Illuminated: Jonathan SafranFoer”)

  9. Starting a Conversation… About influence of Joyce Carol Oates: “The book [Everything Is Illuminated] was once three times as long, and she would say, there is no convincing reason to write this. There is no reason to keep this. You wrote this for you, and there’s no generosity in this. That’s something she believes in is a generosity of creation. Creation is not a solipsistic thing. Ideally, when you make something, what you’re trying to do is engage and start a conversation. And the conversation can’t be one sided.” (“Everything is Illuminated: Jonathan SafranFoer”)

  10. JSF’s Writing: Writing as a means of self-discovery All writing is autobiographical: “ ‘Has to be. There is nowhere for it to come from but from the author. Every character, every event - even if the book is set in Japan in 1400BC - is autobiographical.’ And though you don't write to learn about yourself, ‘that is what happens. When you read something you have written, you have to confront some of the lies you have been telling yourself.’ So writing becomes an experiment, a kind of laboratory in which you discover your own identity” (Mackenzie).

  11. A New Form: Eating Animals

  12. Another Project: Tree of Codes

  13. Works Cited "Everything Is Illuminated: Jonathan SafranFoer." Interview by Connie Martinson. Youtube.com. Connie Martinson Talks Books, 20 June 2011. Web. 1 May 2011. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQxElQbEupY>. "Jonathan SafranFoer." Interview by Robert Birnbaum. Identity Theory.com: a Literary Website. Identity Theory, 23 May 2003. Web. 1 May 2011. <http://www.identitytheory.com/interviews/birnbaum108.php>. Mackenzie, Suzie. "Suzie Mackenzie Meets Jonathan SafranFoer." Guardian.co.uk. The Guardian, 21 May 2005. Web. 01 May 2011. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/may/21/fiction.features>. Solomon, Deborah. "The Rescue Artist." The New York Times. 27 Feb. 2005. Web. 01 May 2011. <http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/magazine/27FOER.html?pa gewanted=all>.

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