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At first sight, Everything is Illuminated would appear to
be the work of an audacious ego, consumed by the current potency and brashness
of his nation, and seems to be second cousin to Dave Eggers' "A
Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius". As the disclaimer
acknowledges, "JSF" himself straddles an uneasy border between fact
and fiction. However, he would not be the first writer to have placed
himself within his own text - one might argue that Jonathan Safran Foer is
being a bit more upfront than Zadie Smith in presenting the world
that "he knows". Besides, it would appear that both artifice
and fiction can still powerfully resurrect the story of the Holocaust from its
cemetery in fact. As the blurb of the book says, "reality collides
with fiction in a heart-stopping scene of extraordinary power".
The Jonathan in the novel is presented
as an apprentice writer, who is struggling to find his "own
voice". Sasha, Jonathan's Ukrainian guide, defeats this cliché by
observing that Jonathan's "own voice" is "in his mouth".
Sasha , the novel's other narrator, himself could just be seen as a gimmick,
placed there purely for comic relief. However, you will find that Sasha's
broken English will not spleen you too much, and that the humour is rewarding,
even if Jonathan believes that it diminishes the world, rather than enriching
it. Jonathan has flown to the Ukraine from the United States to find
Augustine, the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Having
successfully negotiated his way through the notoriously tricky border guards,
Jonathan (or "Jon-fen", as he is soon dubbed), is surprised to find
that his guide from Heritage Touring does not speak English
comprehensively. He is even more aghast to find that the driver for
Heritage Touring is a distinctly unhealthy looking senior citizen (Sasha's
grandfather), who claims that he is blind. More horrifying than this is
his first view of Sammy Davis Jr Jr, the Officious Seeing-eye Bitch of
Heritage Touring, who then proceeds to do a "69" on our
hapless hero. Everything is set for an eventful road journey to find
Trachimbrod, the home shetl or village of Jonathan's grandfather. It
is a journey that has been started by Jonathan's grandmother revealing the
photograph that features Augustine, of whom she refuses to speak, along with any
of the events of that time.
The ambition of this novel is first
revealed by its extraordinary and complex structure (and this is why several
readings are recommended). It dips in and out of time, weaving into the
past and even into the future (witness the extraordinary pages 88 to 89, where
we, along with Brod herself, first learn of The First Rape of Brod D).
Even The Dial in the shetl (the bronzed body of the Kolker), cannot escape the
march of time: his measure of time does not mean that he can control
time, and even he has to duck as the bullets fly. The narrator Jonathan
imagines the world of his ancestors in Trachimbrod, from the time that the
shetl first gained this name (although it is called Sofiowka by and after the
mad squire himself on maps and the official Mormon census records).
Jonathan relates how the hapless merchant Trachim, his wife, and all his
worldly goods, came to be drowned in the River Brod in 1791.
Unfortunately, the accident was only witnessed by Sofiowka, who is not renowned
for being able to string much together, apart from his whole body, on those
occasions when he does not want to forget something. The Well-Regarded
Rabbi's twins, Hannah and Chana, are soon investigating the wreckage, and the
disgraced usurer, Yankel D, also arrives on the scene. But even amongst
such death and devastation, new life emerges, in the form of Trachim's
daughter, Brod, called to premature birth as a result of the
calamity. This event obviously impresses itself on the little shetl, as
150 years later, both the Upright Synagogue and the Sloucher Synagogue are
still celebrating the festival of Trachimday, with Polish and Ukrainian bands
competing with each other along with the young men who dive into the Brod for
the sack of gold. Even if it was a fateful day for Trachim himself, he
was only a traveller passing through the town and so is not truly mourned by
anyone (and although everyone remembers the similarly momentous events of
the Pogrom of the Beaten Chests, no one would want to commemorate them).
And so a kind of Pagan yearly ritual develops to celebrate Trachimday.
Brod's future, unlike the course of
the river that she is named after, is unpredictable and even put to a
lottery. She is put on display in the synagogue, but only the men can see
her in full. For the women, the only sight of Brod is through a hole in
the wall, and thus it is that the women never quite warm to this obscured child
- they never really get to see her in fulll perspective. (Later on in
life, Brod and her husband will only be able to safely view and touch each
other through a hole in the wall, but that's another story). It is
fortunate for her that she inadvertently chooses Yankel D as her foster
father. It is a relationship borne on love and lies. Yankel is not
her real father, but he brings Brod up as if he is (although she only has to
view the ceiling of Yankel's bedroom later on in his life, as his failing
memory forces him to write there things to remind himself of who he is).
Yankel is already leading a life of lies before he meets her, for his real name
is Safran (having taken upon himself the name of the man who stole his wife at
the height of his disgrace - perhaps in order to pretend that he is still with
her). As if to acknowledge that he has no shame left following his
disgrace, his wife left her "Dear John" note in full public
view of the neighbours, who never mention her again. Despite many
attempts to lose the note, Yankel finds that it haunts him for the rest of his
years, much as the deceased philosopher Pinchas T still takes an active part in
the shetl. After a self-imposed exile, Yankel has returned to the
shetl, and has resumed trade at much reduced rates, and his crime is forgotten,
except for the occasional half-whispered insult, the bead around his neck,
and perhaps by the ant in Yankel's ring that hides "its
head between its many legs, in shame", despite being enclosed within
a prison of amber.
As well as all these momentous events
in Jonathan's family history, we also encounter a lot concerning Sasha's family
and himself. All the men in Sasha's family are called Alex (no doubt
after "the Great" conqueror), except for Sasha's clumsy brother,
Little Igor. Sasha is quite excited and apprehensive to meet Jonathan, as
he has desires to earn much currency as an accountant in America.
Sasha goes to many famous nightclubs and has lots of girlfriends to impress his
beloved brother Igor. Although, whether Igor is actually impressed is
doubtful - when asked if his brother is funny, Igor replies that he is merely
"funny looking". Jonathan Safran Foer has done something here
that all debut novelists wish they could do - he has a critic embodied within
the text, who can literally discuss with Jonathan (the author) the merits of
the story that he is trying to compose about Trachimbrod (although we only get
to see Sasha's side of the correspondence, Jonathan's point of view does still
come through in Sasha's replies to him - perhaps most notably in Jonathan's
attempt to delete Sammy Davis Jr Jr from the story). Despite
appearing to be only a comic device, and occasionally being a little too
articulate for someone supposedly poorly versed in the English language,
Sasha's story is inextricably linked with Jonathan's. Both narrators
do grow and change as a result of their encounter, as they struggle to break
through the collective and selective veils and blindnesses imposed upon them by
the local Ukrainians.
Many themes dash and collide throughout this
novel. The existence of God is one such theme. Yankel and Brod
discuss whether God exists, and if he would be sad if he did. According
to "The Beginning of the World often comes", the "shetl was
completely secular" in "that exceptional hour" immediately
following "the Pogrom of the Beaten Chests" - and we follow the
events that lead to it becoming completely secular by design. At the
first reading, I was blind as to why Sasha treats his father as he does.
Violence and love seem to be intermingled within this novel to a great
degree. There is the domestic violence that the Kolker, Brod's husband,
lashes out to her in love, which she takes in love (he seems to developed a
highly aggressive form of spoonerism following a tragicomic accident in the
Trachimbrod flour mill). Sasha's grandfather affects blindness in later
life concerning certain events in Sasha's household (as perhaps he also did
during the war to escape conscription?), as do his own family when they witness
him crying in the night with regards to some unknown grief. When
Jonathan's grandfather returns to Trachimbrod briefly after the war to see if
the Messiah has arrived, all he does is get into an argument with his only
surviving lover (of his legion of lovers) about Ophelia from Hamlet (this is
the only hint we have for Safran's depth of feeling for his closest love, the
Gypsy girl, who was forbidden to him by his customs and his cowardice).
We never really get to see what happens to the shetl's Gypsies, but I
suppose that Jonathan Safran Foer cannot be expected to illuminate truly
everything, just as the Wisps of Ardisht struggle to illuminate their
cigarettes when faced with a limited supply of matches. Maybe
the Gypsies have moved on before the inevitable tragedy of
Trachimbrod occurs? But then I suppose that Gypsies have more of an oral
culture, rather than a written one. The shetl's inhabitants have made a
point of writing the minutiae of their lives down in The Book of Antecedents,
as Jonathan Safran Foer stylistically points out on pages 212-213 "we are
writing... We are writing...". Everything is illuminated in the end,
including, chillingly, the Kolker synagogue. The book's blurb is wrong -
there is far more than one heart-stopping scene of extraordinary power.
Authortrek Rating: 9/10
Kevin Patrick Mahoney
Read
an extract from Everything is Illuminated
Here are a few links related to the novel (page
numbers taken from paperback version ISBN 0241141834):
Gefilte fish
story - p.8 "The Beginning of the World often comes" -
explains what a gefiltefishmonger might do
Sammy
Davis Junior - p. 58 "Going Forth to Lutsk" - was indeed a
convert to Judaism
Galatea
- p. 230 "Falling in Love" - wass the name of the "statue who
came to life because of her sculptor's love!"
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Safran Foer page |
