Girls, What IS It With Jonathan Safran Foer???????

For those of us literary minded girls, darlings, there is that trio of writers known today as the Three Jonathans--Franzen, Lethem, and Safran Foer!!!!!!! Franzen is the King, alphabetically, and from a literary standpoint. Lethem is respectable and renders yeoman service. But Safran Foer in some ways seemed (note I said seemed) the most promising. His signature book, "Everything Is Illuminated" was so moving, so beautifully written, I read it twice. With anticipation, I looked forward to his next work, "Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close," which, if it suffered a bit from Second Novel Syndrome, still retained a glimmer of promise. Except for the gimmick of those pictures.

Like the song in "Gypsy" says, "You Gotta Have A Gimmick," but Mr. Safran Foer has taken this to an extreme where he is in danger of losing his readership. He has just about lost me.

I recently found out about his latest work, "Tree Of Codes." Then I took a look at it in the stores. For the standard paperback price of, say, $15.95, you get pages of paper between binding that resembles an interconnected chain of paper doll cut outs, rendered by a child. Except it is a book, with textual passages ripped out to the point that what is left is impossible to read, because who wants to endure this visual torture, and you can see clear through to the end.

What the writer did, was to take his admittedly favorite book, Bruno Schulz's "The Street Of Crocodiles," and cut out the majority of words so that they tell a different story. Jonathan, honey, if this is your way of honoring your favorite book, and if Schulz is still alive, if I were he, I would be insulted. It has been described as an "artwork, in the form of the book," and the New York Times, who would embrace a piece of soiled toilet paper as such, if it were signed by one of today's Great White Male writers, has called this "a true work of art."

Who are they kidding???? I know what P.T. Barnum said, and the idiot who reviewed this "work" for the Times, is worthy of that famous quote. But I am no sucker, dolls!!!!!!! Good thing there is another writer in Safran Foer's house; his wife, Nicole Krauss, whose "The History Of Love" is a truly satisfying experience (I have read that one twice, too, girls!!!!!) and I look forward to her "Great House," which awaits in one of my To-Be-Read piles.

If Krauss' hubby keeps doing stuff like this, he is going to be run out of this literary town on a rail!!!!!!!! He won't be able to write for supermarket magazines, loves!!!!!!!! Cut the crap, Jonathan, and get back to the serious work that your first book showed you to be SO capable of!!!!!!!!!!!!

Where, darlings, is Clifford Fadiman, when you need him?