Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

From Publishers Weekly Oskar Schell, hero of this brilliant follow-up to Foer's bestselling Everything Is Illuminated , is a nine-year-old amateur inventor, jewelry designer, astrophysicist, tambourine player and pacifist. Like the second-language narrator of Illuminated , Oskar turns his naïvely precocious vocabulary to the understanding of historical tragedy, as he searches New York for the lock that matches a mysterious key left by his father when he was killed in the September 11 attacks, a quest that intertwines with the story of his grandparents, whose lives were blighted by the firebombing of Dresden. Foer embellishes the narrative with evocative graphics, including photographs, colored highlights and passages of illegibly overwritten text, and takes his unique flair for the poetry of miscommunication to occasionally gimmicky lengths, like a two-page soliloquy written entirely in numerical code. Although not quite the comic tour de force that Illuminated was, the novel is replete with hilarious and appalling passages, as when, during show-and-tell, Oskar plays a harrowing recording by a Hiroshima survivor and then launches into a Poindexterish disquisition on the bomb's "charring effect." It's more of a challenge to play in the same way with the very recent collapse of the towers, but Foer gambles on the power of his protagonist's voice to transform the cataclysm from raw current event to a tragedy at once visceral and mythical. Unafraid to show his traumatized characters' constant groping for emotional catharsis, Foer demonstrates once again that he is one of the few contemporary writers willing to risk sentimentalism in order to address great questions of truth, love and beauty. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From School Library Journal Adult/High School-Oskar Schell is not your average nine-year-old. A budding inventor, he spends his time imagining wonderful creations. He also collects random photographs for his scrapbook and sends letters to scientists. When his father dies in the World Trade Center collapse, Oskar shifts his boundless energy to a quest for answers. He finds a key hidden in his father's things that doesn't fit any lock in their New York City apartment; its container is labeled "Black." Using flawless kid logic, Oskar sets out to speak to everyone in New York City with the last name of Black. A retired journalist who keeps a card catalog with entries for everyone he's ever met is just one of the colorful characters the boy meets. As in Everything Is Illuminated (Houghton, 2002), Foer takes a dark subject and works in offbeat humor with puns and wordplay. But Extremely Loud pushes further with the inclusion of photographs, illustrations, and mild experiments in typography reminiscent of Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions (Dell, 1973). The humor works as a deceptive, glitzy cover for a fairly serious tale about loss and recovery. For balance, Foer includes the subplot of Oskar's grandfather, who survived the World War II bombing of Dresden. Although this story is not quite as evocative as Oskar's, it does carry forward and connect firmly to the rest of the novel. The two stories finally intersect in a powerful conclusion that will make even the most jaded hearts fall. -Matthew L. Moffett, Northern Virginia Community College, Annandale Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Bookmarks Magazine After his spellbinding first novel Everything is Illuminated (***1/2 Summer 2002), Jonathan Safran Foer seems "trapped in [ Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close ] by the very tics that made his first one a success" ( Chicago Sun Times ). The plot structurex97quirky boy embarking on a quest for information about a loved onex97mirrors that of his debut. And while Foer still displays a "seemingly inexhaustible supply of verbal ingenuity," this time around there is an uneasy balance between the prose and the subject matter ( Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ). This is, after all, a book about tragedy and loss. Some see Oskarx92s oddball evasion of his emotions as affecting and heartbreaking; others see it as evasive and, whatx92s worse, manipulative. Maybe the wounds of 9/11 are still too fresh. Technical issues are more cut and dried. Oskarx92s voice, for all of its precocity, overall fails to draw the reader in. Instead of portraying the world through Oskarx92s eyes, Foer spins the reader around in the boyx92s head, a claustrophobic world of lists and fears. The inclusion of photos makes the dearth of visual writing that much more glaring. This flatness extends to other characters as well. This can be forgiven in a book with such a large cast (there are 262 Blacks in the New York City phone book). But many grumble that the caricatures include two main characters, the Schell grandparents. It is easy to aim criticsx92 complaints about Oskarx92s precocity at Foer himself; all recognize this young authorx92s great talent. Many admire Foerx92s reach for something grand, even as they acknowledge that he hasnx92t fully accomplished his task in this novel. Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. From Booklist This follow-up to Foer's extremely good and incredibly successful Everything Is Illuminated (2002) stars one Oskar Schell, a nine-year-old amateur inventor and Shakespearean actor. But Oskar's boots, as he likes to say, are very heavy--his father, whom he worshiped, perished in the World Trade Center on 9/11. In his dad's closet a year later, Oskar finds a key in a vase mysteriously labeled "Black." So he goes searching after the lock it opens, visiting (alphabetically) everyone listed in the phone book with the surname Black. Oskar, who's a cross between The Tin Drum 's Oskar Matzerath and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time 's Christopher Boone, doesn't always sound like he's nine, but his first-person narration of his journey is arrestingly beautiful, and readers won't soon forget him. A subplot about Oskar's mute grandfather, who survived the bombing of Dresden, isn't as compelling as Oskar's quest for the lock, but when the stories finally come together, the result is an emotionally devastating climax. No spoilers here, but we will say that the book--which includes a number of photographs and some eccentric typography--ends with what is undoubtedly the most beautiful and heartbreaking flip book in all of literature. REVWR Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved “Energetic, inventive, and ambitious…an uplifting myth born of the sorrows of 9/11.”— Boston Sunday Globe “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a miracle, a daybreak, a man on the moon. It’s so impeccably imagined, so courageously executed, so everlastingly moving and fine.”— Baltimore Sun “A funny, wise, deeply compassionate novel that will renew readers’ faith that the right book at the right time still has the power to change the world.”— O, The Oprah Magazine — JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER is the author of the novels Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close , and a work of nonfiction, Eating Animals . His books have won numerous awards and have been translated into 36 languages. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. What The?What about a teakettle? What if thespout opened and closed when the steam came out, so it would become amouth, and it could whistle pretty melodies, or do Shakespeare, or justcrack up with me? I could invent a teakettle that reads in Dad's voice, soI could fall asleep, or maybe a set of kettles that sings the chorus of "YellowSubmarine," which is a song by the Beatles, who I love, because entomologyis one of my raisons d'être, which is a French expression that I know.Another good thing is that I could train my anus to talk when I farted. If Iwanted to be extremely hilarious, I'dtrain it to say, "Wasn't me!" every time I madean incredibly bad fart. And if I ever made an incredibly bad fart in the Hallof Mirrors, which is in Versailles, which is outside of Paris, which is inFrance, obviously, my anus would say, "Ce n'étais pas moi!" What about little microphones? What ifeveryone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our heartsthrough little speakers, which could be in the pouches of our overalls? Whenyou skateboarded down the street at night you could hear everyone'sheartbeat, and they could hear yours,sort of like sonar. One weird thing is, I wonderif everyone's hearts would start to beat at the same time, like how womenwho live together have their menstrual periods at the same time,which I know about, but don't really want to know about. That would be soweird, except that the place in the hospital where babies are born wouldsound like a crystal chandelier in a houseboat, because the babies wouldn'thave had time to match up their heartbeats yet. And at the finish lineat the end of the New York City Marathon it would sound like war. And also, there are so many times whenyou need to make a quick escape, but humans don't havetheir own wings, or not yet, anyway, so what about a birdseed shirt? Anyway. My first jujitsu class was three and ahalf months ago. Self-defense was something that I wasextremely curious about, for obvious reasons, and Mom thought it would begood for me to have a physical activity besides tambourining, so my firstjujitsu class was three and a half months ago. There were fourteen kids in theclass, and we all had on neat white robes. We practiced bowing, and then wewere all sitting down Native American style, and then Sensei Markasked me to go over to him. "Kick my privates," he told me. That made me feelself-conscious. "Excusez-moi?" I told him. He spread his legs and toldme, "I want you to kick my privates as hard as you can." He put his hands athis sides, and took a breath in, and closed his eyes, and that's how I knewthat actually he meant business. "Jose," I told him, and insideI was thinking, What the? He told me, "Go on, guy. Destroy my privates.""Destroy your privates?" With his eyes still closed he cracked up a lotand said, "You couldn't destroy my privates if you tried. That's what'sgoing on here. This is a demonstration of the well-trained body's ability toabsorb a direct blow. Now destroy my privates." I told him, "I'm a pacifist,"and since most people my age don't know what that means, I turned aroundand told the others, "I don't think it's right to destroy people's privates.Ever." Sensei Mark said, "Can I ask you something?" I turned back around andtold him, " 'Can I ask you something?' is asking me something." He said, "Doyou have dreams of becoming a jujitsu master?" "No," I told him, eventhough I don't have dreams of running the family jewelry business anymore. Hesaid, "Do you want to know how a jujitsu student becomes a jujitsumaster?" "I want to know everything," Itold him, but that isn't true anymore either.He told me, "A jujitsu student becomes a jujitsu master by destroyinghis master's privates." I told him, "That's fascinating." My lastjujitsu class was three and a half months ago. I desperately wish I had my tambourinewith me now, because even after everything I'm still wearingheavy boots, and sometimes it helps to play a good beat. My most impressivesong that I can play on my tambourine is "The Flight of the Bumblebee," byNicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, which is also the ring tone I downloaded for the cellphone I got after Dad died. It's pretty amazing that I can play "The Flight ofthe Bumblebee," because you have to hit incredibly fast in parts, and that'sextremely hard for me, because I don't really have wrists yet. Ron offered tobuy me a five-piece drum set. Money can't buy me love, obviously, but Iasked if it would have Zildjian cymbals. He said, "Whatever you want," and then hetook my yo-yo off my desk and started to walk the dog with it. I knowhe just wanted to be friendly, but it made me incredibly angry. "Yo-yo moi!" Itold him, grabbing it back. What I really wanted to tell him was "You'renot my dad, and you never will be." Isn't it so weird how the number ofdead people is increasing even though the earth stays the same size, sothat one day there isn't going to be room to bury anyone anymore? For myninth birthday last year, Grandma gave me a subscription to NationalGeographic, which she calls "the National Geographic." She also gave me a whiteblazer, because I only wear white clothes, and it's too big to wear so itwill last me a long time. She also gave me Grandpa's camera, which I loved fortwo reasons. I asked why he didn't take it with him when he left her. Shesaid, "Maybe he wanted you to have it." I said, "But I was negative-thirty yearsold." She said, "Still." Anyway, the fascinating thing was that I read inNational Geographic that there are more people alive now than have died in allof human history. In other words, if everyone wanted to play Hamlet at once,they couldn't, because there aren't enough skulls! So what about skyscrapers for deadpeople that were built down? They could be underneath the skyscrapersfor living people that are built up. You could bury people one hundred floorsdown, and a whole dead world could be underneath the living one.Sometimes I think it would be weird if there were a skyscraper that moved upand down while its elevator stayed in place. So if you wanted to go to theninety-fifth floor, you'd just press the 95 button and the ninety-fifth floor wouldcome to you. Also, that could be extremely useful, because if you're onthe ninety-fifth floor, and a plane hits below you, the building could take youto the ground, and everyone could be safe, even if you left your birdseedshirt at home that day. I've only been in a limousine twiceever. The first time was terrible, even though the limousine was wonderful.I'm not allowed to watch TV at home, and I'm not allowed to watch TV inlimousines either, but it was still neat that there was a TV there. I askedif we could go by school, so Toothpaste and The Minch could see me ina limousine. Mom said that school wasn't on the way, and wecouldn't be late to the cemetery. "Why not?" I asked, which I actually thoughtwas a good question, because if you think about it, why not? Even though I'mnot anymore, I used to be an atheist, which means I didn't believe inthings that couldn't be observed. I believed that once you're dead, you'redead forever, and you don't feel anything, and you don't even dream. It'snot that I believe in things that can't be observed now, because I don't. It'sthat I believe that things are extremely complicated. And anyway, it's not likewe were actually burying him, anyway. Even though I was trying hard for itnot to, it was annoying me how Grandma kept touching me, so Iclimbed into the front seat and poked the driver's shoulder until he gave mesome attention. "What. Is. Your. Designation." I asked in Stephen Hawkingvoice. "Say what?" "He wants to know your name," Grandma said from theback seat. He handed me his card.GERALD THOMPSONSunshine Limousineserving the five boroughs(212) 570-7249 I handed him my card and told him,"Greetings. Gerald. I. Am. Oskar." He asked me why I was talkinglike that. I told him, "Oskar's CPU is a neural-net processor. A learningcomputer. The more contact he has with humans, the more he learns." Geraldsaid, "O" and then he said "K." I couldn't tell if he liked me or not, soI told him, "Your sunglasses are one hundred dollars." He said, "Oneseventy-five." "Do you know a lot of curse words?" "I know a couple." "I'm notallowed to use curse words." "Bummer." "What's 'bummer'? ""It's a bad thing." "Do you know 'shit'?" "That's a curse, isn'tit?" "Not if you say 'shiitake.' " "Guess not." "Succotash my Balzac,dipshiitake." Gerald shook his head and cracked up a little, but not in the badway, which is at me. "I can't even say 'hair pie,' " I told him, "unlessI'm talking about an actual pie made out of rabbits. Cool driving gloves." "Thanks."And then I thought of something, so I said it. "Actually, if limousines wereextremely long, they wouldn't need drivers. You could just get in the backseat, walk through the limousine, and then get out of the front seat, whichwould be where you wanted to go. So in this situation, the front seat would beat the cemetery." "And I would be watching the game right now." I pattedhis shoulder and told him, "When you look up 'hilarious' in the dictionary,there's a picture of you." In the back seat, Mom was holdingsomething in her purse. I could tell that she was squeezing it,because I could see her arm muscles. Grandma was knitting white mittens, so Iknew they were for me, even though it wasn't cold out. I wanted toask Mom what she was squeezing and why she had to keep it hidden. Iremember thinking that even if I were suffering hypothermia, I would never,ever put on those mittens. "Now that I'm thinking about it," Itold Gerald, "they could make an incredibly long limousine that had itsback seat at your mom's VJ and its front seat at your mausoleum, and itwould be as long as your life." Gerald said, "Yeah, but if everyone lived likethat, no one would ever meet anyone, right?" I said, "So?" Mom squeezed, and Grandma knitted, andI told Gerald, "I kicked a French chicken in the stomach once,"because I wanted to make him crack up, because if I could make himcrack up, my boots could be a little lighter. He didn't say anything,probably because he didn't hear me, so I said, "I said I kicked a French chickenin the stomach once." "Huh?" "It said, 'Oeuf.' " "What is that?" "It's ajoke. Do you want to hear another, or have you already had un oeuf?" He lookedat Grandma in the mirror and said, "What's he saying?" She said, "Hisgrandfather loved animals more than he loved people." I said, "Get it? Oeuf?" I crawled back, because it's dangerousto drive and talk at the same time, especially on the highway,which is what we were on. Grandma started touching me again, which wasannoying, even though I didn't want it to be. Mom said, "Honey," and I said,"Oui," and she said, "Did you give a copy of our apartment key to themailman?" I thought it was so weird that she would mention that then, because itdidn't have to do with anything, but I think she was looking for something totalk about that wasn't the obvious thing. I said, "The mailperson is amailwoman." She nodded, but not exactly at me, and she asked if I'd given themailwoman a key. I nodded yes, because I never used to lie to herbefore everything happened. I didn't have a reason to. "Why did you do that?" sheasked. So I told her, "Stan—" And she said, "Who?" And I said, "Stan thedoorman. Sometimes he runs around the corner for coffee, and I want to be sureall of my packages get to me, so I thought, if Alicia —" "Who?" "Themailwoman. If she had a key, she could leave things inside our door." "But youcan't give a key to a stranger." "Fortunately Alicia isn't astranger." "We have lots of valuable things in our apartment." "I know. Wehave really great things." "Sometimes people who seem good end up being not asgood as you might have hoped, you know? What if she had stolen yourthings?" "She wouldn't." "But what if?" "But she wouldn't." "Well, did shegive you a key to her apartment?" She was obviously mad at me, but I didn'tknow why. I hadn't done anything wrong. Or if I had, I didn't know whatit was. And I definitely didn't mean to do it. I moved over to Grandma's side of thelimousine and told Mom, "Why would I need a key to herapartment?" She could tell that I was zipping up the sleeping bag of myself,and I could tell that she didn't really love me. I knew the truth, which wasthat if she could have chosen, it would have been my funeral we were driving to.I looked up at the limousine's sunroof, and I imagined the world beforethere were ceilings, which made me wonder: Does a cave have no ceiling, oris a cave all ceiling? "Maybe you could check with me next time, OK?""Don't be mad at me," I said, and I reached over Grandma and opened andclosed the door's lock a couple of times. "I'm not mad at you," she said."Not even a little?" "No." "Do you still love me?" It didn't seem like theperfect time to mention that I had already made copies of the key for the delivererfrom Pizza Hut, and the UPS person, and also the nice guys from Greenpeace,so they could leave me articles on manatees and other animals that aregoing extinct when Stan is getting coffee. "I've never loved you more." "Mom?" "Yes?" "I have a question.""OK." "What are you squeezing in your purse?" She pulled outher hand and opened it, and it was empty. "Just squeezing," she said. Even though it was an incredibly sadday, she looked so, so beautiful. I kept trying to figure out away to tell her that, but all of the ways I thought of were weird and wrong. She waswearing the bracelet that I made for her, and that made me feel like onehundred dollars. I love making jewelry for her, because it makes her happy, andmaking her happy is another one of my raisons d'être. It isn't anymore, but for a really longtime it was my dream to take over the family jewelry business. Dadconstantly used to tell me I was too smart for retail. That never made senseto me, because he was smarter than me, so if I was too smart for retail,then he really must have been too smart for retail. I told him that. "First ofall," he told me, "I'm not smarter thanyou, I'm more knowledgeable than you, andthat's only because I'm older than you. Parents are always moreknowledgeable than their children, and children are always smarter than theirparents." "Unless the child is a mental retard," I told him. He didn't haveanything to say about that. "You said'first of all,' so what's second of all?""Second of all, if I'm so smart, thenwhy am I in retail?" "That's true," I said. Andthen I thought of something: "But wait a minute, it won't be the family jewelrybusiness if no one in the family is running it." He told me, "Sure it will.It'll just be someone else's family." I asked, "Well, what about our family?Will we open a new business?" He said, "We'll open something." I thoughtabout that my second time in a limousine, when the renter and I were onour way to dig up Dad's empty coffin. A great game that Dad and I wouldsometimes play on Sundays was Reconnaissance Expedition. Sometimesthe Reconnaissance Expeditions were extremely simple, likewhen he told me to bring back something from every decade in thetwentieth century—I was clever and brought back a rock—and sometimes theywere incredibly complicated and would go on for a couple of weeks. Forthe last one we ever did, which never finished, he gave me a map of CentralPark. I said, "And?" And he said, "And what?" I said, "What are the clues?" Hesaid, "Who said there had to be clues?" "There are always clues." "Thatdoesn't, in itself, suggest anything." "Not a single clue?" He said,"Unless no clues is a clue." "Is no clues a clue?" He shrugged hisshoulders, like he had no idea what I was talking about. I loved that. I spent all day walking around thepark, looking for something that might tell me something, but the problemwas that I didn't know what I was looking for. I went up to people andasked if they knew anything that I should know, because sometimes Dad would designReconnaissance Expeditions so I would have to talk to people. Buteveryone I went up to was just like, What the? I looked for clues around thereservoir. I read every poster on every lamppost and tree. I inspected thedescriptions of the animals at the zoo. I even made kite-fliers reel in theirkites so I could examine them, although I knew it was improbable. But that's howtricky Dad could be. There was nothing, which would have beenunfortunate, unless nothing was a clue. Was nothing a clue? That night we ordered General Tso'sGluten for dinner and I noticed that Dad was using a fork, eventhough he was perfect with chopsticks. "Wait a minute!" I said, andstood up. I pointed at his fork. "Is that fork a clue?" He shrugged hisshoulders, which to me meant it was a major clue. I thought: Fork, fork. I ranto my laboratory and got my metal detector out of its box in the closet.Because I'm not allowed to be in the park alone at night, Grandma went withme. I started at the Eighty-sixth Street entrance and walked in extremelyprecise lines, like I was one of the Mexican guys who mow the lawn, so Iwouldn't miss anything. I knew the insects were loud because it was summer,but I didn't hear them because my earphones covered my ears. It wasjust me and the metal underground. Every time the beeps would get closetogether, I'd tell Grandma to shine the flashlight on the spot. ThenI'd put on my white gloves, take the hand shovel from my kit, and digextremely gently. When I saw something, I used a paintbrush to get rid of thedirt, just like a real archeologist. Even though I only searched a small area ofthe park that night, I dug up a quarter, and a handful of paper clips, and what Ithought was the chain from a lamp that you pull to make the light go on,and a refrigerator magnet for sushi, which I know about, but wish I didn't. Iput all of the evidence in a bag and marked on a map where I found it. When I got home, I examined theevidence in my laboratory under my microscope, one piece at a time: abent spoon, some screws, a pair of rusty scissors, a toy car, a pen, a keyring, broken glasses for someone with incredibly bad eyes . . . I brought them to Dad, who was readingthe New York Times at the kitchen table, marking the mistakeswith his red pen. "Here's what I've found," I said, pushing my pussy off thetable with the tray of evidence. Dad looked at it and nodded. I asked, "So?"He shrugged his shoulders like he had no idea what I was talking about,and he went back to the paper. "Can't you even tell me if I'm on the righttrack?" Buckminster purred, and Dad shrugged his shoulders again. "But ifyou don't tell me anything, how can I ever be right?" He circled something inan article and said, "Another way of looking at it would be, how could youever be wrong?" He got up to get a drink of water, andI examined what he'd circled on the page, because that's how trickyhe could be. It was in an article about the girl who had disappeared, and howeveryone thought the congressman who was humping her had killed her. Afew months later they found her body in Rock Creek Park, which is inWashington, D.C., but by then everything was different, and no one cared anymore,except for her parents.statement, read to the hundreds ofgathered press from a makeshift media center off the back of the family home,Levy's father adamantly restated his confidence that his daughter would befound. "We will not stop looking until we are given a definitive reason to stoplooking, namely, Chandra's return." During the brief question and answerperiod that followed, a reporter from El Pais asked Mr. Levy if by "return" hemeant "safe return." Overcome with emotion, Mr. Levy was unable to speak,and his lawyer took the microphone. "We continue to hope andpray for Chandra's safety, and will do everything within It wasn't a mistake! It was a messageto me! I went back to the park every night forthe next three nights. I dug up a hair clip, and a roll of pennies,and a thumbtack, and a coat hanger, and a 9V battery, and a Swiss Army knife,and a tiny picture frame, and a tag for a dog named Turbo, and a square ofaluminum foil, and a ring, and a razor, and an extremely old pocket watch thatwas stopped at 5:37, although I didn't know if it was a.m. or p.m. But Istill couldn't figure out what it all meant. The more I found, the less Iunderstood. I spread the map out on the dining roomtable, and I held down the corners with cans of V8. The dots fromwhere I'd found things looked like the stars in the universe. I connected them,like an astrologer, and if you squinted your eyes like a Chineseperson, it kind of looked like the word "fragile." Fragile. What wasfragile? Was Central Park fragile? Was nature fragile? Were the things I foundfragile? A thumbtack isn't fragile. Is a bent spoon fragile? I erased, andconnected the dots in a different way, to make "door." Fragile? Door? Then Ithought of porte, which is French for door, obviously. I erased and connected thedots to make "porte." I had the revelation that I could connect the dotsto make "cyborg," and "platypus," and "boobs," and even "Oskar," if youwere extremely Chinese. I could connect them to make almost anything Iwanted, which meant I wasn't getting closer to anything. And now I'llnever know what I was supposed to find. And that's another reason I can'tsleep. Anyway. I'm not allowed to watch TV, although Iam allowed to rent documentaries that are approved for me,and I can read anything I want. My favorite book is A Brief History ofTime, even though I haven't actuallyfinished it, because the math is incredibly hardand Mom isn't good at helping me. One of my favorite parts is thebeginning of the first chapter, whereStephen Hawking tells about a famous scientistwho was giving a lecture about how the earth orbits the sun, and the sunorbits the solar system, and whatever. Then a woman in the back of the roomraised her hand and said, "What you have told us is rubbish. The world isreally a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise." So the scientistasked her what the tortoise was standing on. And she said, "But it's turtles allthe way down!" I love that story, because it shows howignorant people can be. And also because I love tortoises. A few weeks after the worst day, Istarted writing lots of letters. I don't know why, but it was one of theonly things that made my boots lighter. One weird thing is that instead of usingnormal stamps, I used stamps from my collection, including valuable ones,which sometimes made me wonder if what I was really doing was trying toget rid of things. The first letter I wrote was to Stephen Hawking. I used a stampof Alexander Graham Bell. Dear Stephen Hawking, Can I please be your protégé? Thanks, Oskar Schell I thought he wasn't going to respond,because he was such an amazing person and I was so normal. Butthen one day I came home from school and Stan handed me an envelopeand said, "You've got mail!" in the AOL voice I taught him. I ran up the 105stairs to our apartment, and ran to my laboratory, and went into my closet,and turned on my flashlight, and opened it. The letter inside was typed,obviously, because Stephen Hawking can't use his hands, because he hasamyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which I know about, unfortunately.Thank you for your letter. Because ofthe large volume of mail I receive, I am unable to write personal responses.Nevertheless, know that I read and save every letter, with the hope of one daybeing able to give each the proper response it deserves. Until that day,Most sincerely,Stephen Hawking I called Mom's cell. "Oskar?" "Youpicked up before it rang." "Is everything OK?" "I'm gonna need alaminator." "A laminator?" "There's something incredibly wonderful that Iwant to preserve." Dad always used to tuck me in, and he'dtell the greatest stories, and we'd read the New York Timestogether, and sometimes he'd whistle "I Am the Walrus," because that was hisfavorite song, even though he couldn't explain what it meant, which frustratedme. One thing that was so great was how he could find a mistake in everysingle article we looked at. Sometimes they were grammar mistakes, sometimesthey were mistakes with geography or facts, and sometimes thearticle just didn't tell the whole story. I loved having a dad who was smarterthan the New York Times, and I loved how my cheek could feel the hairs on hischest through his T-shirt, and how he always smelled like shaving, even atthe end of the day. Being with him made my brain quiet. I didn't have toinvent a thing. When Dad was tucking me in that night,the night before the worst day, I asked if the world was a flatplate supported on the back of a giant tortoise. "Excuse me?" "It's just thatwhy does the earth stay in place instead of falling through the universe?" "Isthis Oskar I'm tucking in? Has an alien stolen his brain for experimentation?" Isaid, "We don't believe in aliens." He said, "The earth does fall through theuniverse. You know that, buddy. It's constantly falling toward the sun.That's what it means to orbit." So I said, "Obviously, but why is theregravity?" He said, "What do you mean why is there gravity?" "What's the reason?""Who said there had to be a reason?" "No one did, exactly." "Myquestion was rhetorical." "What's that mean?" "It means I wasn't asking it foran answer, but to make a point." "What point?" "That theredoesn't have to be a reason." "But if there isn't a reason, then why does theuniverse exist at all?" "Because of sympathetic conditions." "So then why amI your son?" "Because Mom and I made love, and one of my spermfertilized one of her eggs." "Excuse me while I regurgitate." "Don't act yourage." "Well, what I don't get is why do we exist? I don't mean how, but why." Iwatched the fireflies of his thoughts orbit his head. He said, "We exist because weexist." "What the?" "We could imagine all sorts of universes unlikethis one, but this is the one that happened." I understood what he meant, and Ididn't disagree with him, but I didn't agree with him either. Justbecause you're an atheist, that doesn't mean you wouldn't love for things tohave reasons for why they are. I turned on my shortwave radio, andwith Dad's help I was able to pick up someone speaking Greek, whichwas nice. We couldn't understand what he was saying, but we lay there,looking at the glow-in-the-dark constellations on my ceiling, andlistened for a while. "Your grandfather spoke Greek," he said. "You mean hespeaks Greek," I said. "That's right. He just doesn't speak it here." "Maybethat's him we're listening to." The front page was spread over us like a blanket.There was a picture of a tennis player on his back, who I guess was thewinner, but I couldn't really tell if he was happy or sad. "Dad?" "Yeah?" "Could you tell me astory?" "Sure." "A good one?" "As opposed to all the boring onesI tell." "Right." I tucked my body incredibly close into his, so my nosepushed into his armpit. "And you won't interrupt me?" "I'll try not to.""Because it makes it hard to tell astory." "And it's annoying." "And it's annoying." The moment before he started was myfavorite moment. "Once upon a time, New York City had asixth borough." "What's a borough?" "That's what I call aninterruption." "I know, but the story won't make any sense to me if I don't knowwhat a borough is." "It's like a neighborhood. Or a collection ofneighborhoods." "So if there was once a sixth borough, then what are the fiveboroughs?" "Manhattan, obviously, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and theBronx." "Have I ever been to any of the other boroughs?" "Here we go." "Ijust want to know." "We went to the Bronx Zoo once, a few years ago.Remember that?" "No." "And we've been to Brooklyn to see the roses at the BotanicGarden." "Have I been to Queens?" "I don't think so." "Have Ibeen to Staten Island?" "No." "Was there really a sixth borough?" "I've beentrying to tell you." "No moreinterruptions. I promise." When the story finished, we turned theradio back on and found someone speaking French. That wasespecially nice, because it reminded me of the vacation we just came backfrom, which I wish never ended. After a while, Dad asked me if I was awake. Itold him no, because I knew that he didn't like to leave until I had fallenasleep, and I didn't want him to betired for work in the morning. He kissed myforehead and said good night, and then he was at the door. "Dad?" "Yeah, buddy?" "Nothing." The next time I heard his voice waswhen I came home from school the next day. We were let outearly, because of what happened. I wasn't even a little bit panicky,because both Mom and Dad worked in midtown, and Grandma didn't work,obviously, so everyone I loved was safe. I know that it was 10:18 when I gothome, because I look at my watch a lot. The apartment was so emptyand so quiet. As I walked to the kitchen, I invented a lever that couldbe on the front door, which would trigger a huge spoked wheel in the living roomto turn against metal teeth that would hang down from the ceiling, so that itwould play beautiful music, like maybe "Fixing a Hole" or "I Want to TellYou," and the apartment would be one huge music box. After I petted Buckminster for a fewseconds, to show him I loved him, I checked the phone messages. Ididn't have a cell phone yet, and when we were leaving school, Toothpaste toldme he'd call to let me know whether I was going to watch him attemptskateboarding tricks in the park, or if we were going to go look at Playboymagazines in the drugstore with the aisles where no one can see what you're lookingat, which I didn't feel like doing, but still.Message one. Tuesday, 8:52 a.m. Isanybody there? Hello? It's Dad. If you're there, pick up. I just tried the office,but no one was picking up. Listen, something's happened. I'm OK. They'retelling us to stay where we are and wait for the firemen. I'm sure it'sfine. I'll give you another call when Ihave a better idea of what's going on. Justwanted to let you know that I'm OK, and not to worry. I'll call again soon. There were four more messages from him:one at 9:12, one at 9:31, one at 9:46, and one at 10:04. Ilistened to them, and listened to them again, and then before I had time tofigure out what to do, or even what to think or feel, the phone started ringing. It was 10:22:27. I looked at the caller ID and saw thatit was him.Copyright © 2005 by Jonathan SafranFoer. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company. Read more