Just Do It

Jonathan Safran Foer


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Published: Nov 8, 2006

Thu., Nov. 9, 7 p.m., free, Penn Bookstore, 3601 Walnut St., 215-898-7595

Ever since he won crazy acclaim for the broken-English travel novel Everything Is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer has found himself bathed in the glow of holy meta-fiction. The book, a tale of Jewish-American males seeking out heroic Holocaust survivors—cross-cut with personal letters, novel jottings and magic-realist memories—is driven by Safran Foer's witty warmth and complex passages.

Unfortunately, his latest novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (Houghton Mifflin), has a precociousness that's overbearing. But during his upcoming reading, it might not be an issue. Extremely Loud's protagonist (child prodigy inventor and astrophysicist Oskar Schell), wild structural leaps and the book's McSweeney's-ish graphic design threaten the novel's charms, but Schell's brainy buoyancy makes for a good theatrical reading.

The book

shows off Safran Foer's precious streak quite nicely. So if you'd like his take on a 9-year-old pacifist genius' smug quest to find answers—a little Foucault mixed with the Hardy Boys—Safran Foer's take on post-9/11 mystery is for you.