I think I should start a category of "Exceptions" as in- they are not exactly "classics" but are still masterpieces. Because there are some styles that are so original, and connect so much to today's world (and actually my way of thinking) that are worth quoting. Such as this book- I have read it for the second time now. The first time was, I think, at my community college for a Literature class. That man was so eccentric! He basically said, "well you all know that you're taking this class because you want to fall in love". Which was of course in ESSENCE true. I used to doodle (back in my doodling days) his funny remarks on my notes. He was the only honest professor I've ever had- he even admitted that he couldn't believe he had gotten a Ph.D. seeming too easy- as if he didn't deserve it. I remember he was irish- gay and practiced yoga. One of those people it would be a privelege to have a drink with...
Anyway, I love the artistic style of a book- rarely have I seen this mesmerizing play with words- in the physical sense. Too bad I read it on a pdf- :( because I remember the physical book made quite an impression on one emotionally.
"[...] my thinking, the cancer of never letting go, is ignorance bliss, I don't know, but it's so painful to think, and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think, I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it."
"and instead of singing in the shower I would write out the lyrics of my favorite songs, the ink would turn the water blue or red or green, and the music would run down my legs"
"we laughed and laughed, together and separately, out loud and silently, we were determined to ignore whatever needed to be ignored, to build a new world from nothing if nothing in our world could be salvaged, it was one of the best days of my life, a day during which I lived my life and didn't think about my life at all."
"That secret was a hole in the middle of me that every happy thing fell into."
"'Humans are the only animal that blushes, laughs, has religion, wages war, and kisses with lips. So in a way, the more you kiss with lips, the more human you are.'"
" Grandma believes in God, but she doesn't believe in taxis, so I bled on my shirt on the bus." :)
" But a friction began to arise between Nothing and Something, in the morning the Nothing vase cast a Something shadow, like the memory of someone you've lost, what can you say about that, at night the Nothing light from the guest room spilled under the Nothing door and stained the Something hallway, there's nothing to say."
Everyone in Oskar's life has lost someone...
"Keep thinking. Thinking would keep me alive. But now I am alive, and thinking is killing me."
"'The boy covered his can with a lid, removed it from the string, and put her love for him on a shelf in his closet. Of course, he never could open the can, because then he would lose its contents. It was enough just to know it was there."
I love how an idea can be put inside something material...
"When I looked at you, my life made sense. Even the bad things made sense. They were necessary to make you possible. Alas. Your songs. My parents' lives made sense. My grandparents'. Even Anna's life."
Think of the future generations- what you do know affects them to- and what you do now will add to THEIR life... it's all worth it.
" Everything in the history of the world can be proven wrong in one moment."
Maybe the passage about the binoculars is a key to the title- I've been trying to figure it out the entire time. When he says, " I could see things that were far away incredibly close" and then he proceeds to see a person which he likens to his dad writing something. The fact is that this entire time he was been missing his dad, and the fact that he tries to see him (through the clues) is a way of him trying to cope with his death. His dad is very close to his heart, and yet he is dead. That is something he has to realize.
"I never went to find him on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, because I was happier believing he was there than finding out for sure."
"I started thinking about the pixels in the image of the falling body, and how the closer you looked, the less you could see."
"And how can you say I love you to someone you love?"
Maybe he means to say- will it ever express exactly what you feel for that person even if you use the words?
"I was surprised again, although again I shouldn't have been. I was surprised that Dad wasn't there. In my brain I knew he wouldn't be, obviously, but I guess my heart believed something else. Or maybe I was surprised by how incredibly empty it was. I felt like I was looking into the dictionary definition of emptiness."
---
Great book to reread... It taught me so much- rereading it at this specific time of my life. My favorite thing about Oskar is that he is so honest about all of it- even though he doesn't specifically admit to it. He looks at the world with such a curiosity and sincerity... And he is the one who is trying to find the truth, to try to find his dad because he misses him. It is such a beautiful optimism, such a hope for life! Yes- he is having a hard time with it all- the shrink telling him that maybe something GOOD can come out of his dad's death, his mom having Rob in her life, how everyone is moving on- and he cannot. He cannot- because I think he didn't say his final goodbye... not the way it was supposed to be anyway. And so he instinctively is trying to fix the problem, to make his dad come alive again. And for this amount of time- his dad is. And that is why it was so important for Oskar to hear from Abby's ex-husband what he was LIKE, because he just wanted to hear someone ELSE praise him, to tell him the things he already knew. Sometimes people can be reincarnated through our impressions about them- a part of them is still alive because they continue to live in our own world. These impressions give them immortality.
And the most poetic part of it is that both Oskar and his Grandma (who had also lost her husband) both wish for things to go backwards- all of it to REWIND to a point where they felt safe, and to live within that moment forever. And in a way though, they DO, because they do not forget about it. I think it lives within them and IS them because they loved these people with all of their heart, these people were their WORLD and gave them meaning in life. Grandma gave up everything and joined her husband into being stuck in time... and in a way they BOTH lived for the Anna, whom they both loved more than they loved each other... and that is to the point where she wanted to return, back to where they were in bed- back to the childhood- back to a regret-because the same thing goes for Oskar- instead of I LOVE YOU at the end of the story, he said:
"Dad?'
I don't know if that is a huge part of the story- but I still think it's important. Maybe they both don't regret it, just that they CANNOT say these things. Which I mean I agree, for me it is the same as well. But you know, if you could go back, knowing all the things you know now, I think you should live, like the grandfather says, "why didn't I learn to treat everything like it was the last time, my greatest regret is how much I believed in the future". It's not that we should party and go crazy (referencing the whole YOLO culture of today). But understand that everything can change in a moment, "Everything in the history of the worldcan be proven wrong in one moment." We are temporary! And we must live that way! I think one of the messages is that we should tell the person what we feel at that time, for it can be the most important thing we could have done in our life.
Speaking of feelings, it is very interesting that so many characters are incapable of telling each other their feelings. Looking at the grandma/grandpa relationship. One cannot say that it is ABNORMAL in any way, it's just that so many things would have been different, YEARS could have been saved, if they would have communicated correctly, instead of hiding away from each other, and maybe from themselves. It is a journey, it is a process, I sure know, to tell one what you really think. They both wrote pages and pages (some blank), but could not take them from the "inside to the outside" because they saw this BARRIER (as with the bookshelves filled with books). So grandpa stopped talking, and grandma never really addressed the problems. As opposed to Oskar, which we should admire here, is that he also has problems being truthful TO HIMSELF, but yet- he still tries to find a solution in his own way- which is going about town calling up every person unde the last name of Black. That is more than grandpa/grandma have every done... Anyway they kind of finally figure things out at the end- ironic that a death brings them back to "life".
My question is though: what is the Extremely Loud part of the title? Maybe when Mr. Black first heard sound for the first time, and experienced the most humble appreciation for life? How life can be so spontaneous and just breathtaking. The first sound he heard was the wings of birds flying...
I think this book gives us an apprection for life- while dealing with a death. That life DOES move on, that we DO keep on living, and yet, remember all of those memories, all of those experiences that make us US... I'm not sure whether that makes any sense...but all the same!
Anyway, I love the artistic style of a book- rarely have I seen this mesmerizing play with words- in the physical sense. Too bad I read it on a pdf- :( because I remember the physical book made quite an impression on one emotionally.
"[...] my thinking, the cancer of never letting go, is ignorance bliss, I don't know, but it's so painful to think, and tell me, what did thinking ever do for me, to what great place did thinking ever bring me? I think and think and think, I've thought myself out of happiness one million times, but never once into it."
"and instead of singing in the shower I would write out the lyrics of my favorite songs, the ink would turn the water blue or red or green, and the music would run down my legs"
"we laughed and laughed, together and separately, out loud and silently, we were determined to ignore whatever needed to be ignored, to build a new world from nothing if nothing in our world could be salvaged, it was one of the best days of my life, a day during which I lived my life and didn't think about my life at all."
"That secret was a hole in the middle of me that every happy thing fell into."
"'Humans are the only animal that blushes, laughs, has religion, wages war, and kisses with lips. So in a way, the more you kiss with lips, the more human you are.'"
" Grandma believes in God, but she doesn't believe in taxis, so I bled on my shirt on the bus." :)
" But a friction began to arise between Nothing and Something, in the morning the Nothing vase cast a Something shadow, like the memory of someone you've lost, what can you say about that, at night the Nothing light from the guest room spilled under the Nothing door and stained the Something hallway, there's nothing to say."
Everyone in Oskar's life has lost someone...
"Keep thinking. Thinking would keep me alive. But now I am alive, and thinking is killing me."
"'The boy covered his can with a lid, removed it from the string, and put her love for him on a shelf in his closet. Of course, he never could open the can, because then he would lose its contents. It was enough just to know it was there."
I love how an idea can be put inside something material...
"When I looked at you, my life made sense. Even the bad things made sense. They were necessary to make you possible. Alas. Your songs. My parents' lives made sense. My grandparents'. Even Anna's life."
Think of the future generations- what you do know affects them to- and what you do now will add to THEIR life... it's all worth it.
" Everything in the history of the world can be proven wrong in one moment."
Maybe the passage about the binoculars is a key to the title- I've been trying to figure it out the entire time. When he says, " I could see things that were far away incredibly close" and then he proceeds to see a person which he likens to his dad writing something. The fact is that this entire time he was been missing his dad, and the fact that he tries to see him (through the clues) is a way of him trying to cope with his death. His dad is very close to his heart, and yet he is dead. That is something he has to realize.
"I never went to find him on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, because I was happier believing he was there than finding out for sure."
"I started thinking about the pixels in the image of the falling body, and how the closer you looked, the less you could see."
"And how can you say I love you to someone you love?"
Maybe he means to say- will it ever express exactly what you feel for that person even if you use the words?
"I was surprised again, although again I shouldn't have been. I was surprised that Dad wasn't there. In my brain I knew he wouldn't be, obviously, but I guess my heart believed something else. Or maybe I was surprised by how incredibly empty it was. I felt like I was looking into the dictionary definition of emptiness."
Even when you KNOW something is TRUE LOGICALLY and then it still manages to surprise you- because the entire time you were hoping for the opposite thing...
---
Great book to reread... It taught me so much- rereading it at this specific time of my life. My favorite thing about Oskar is that he is so honest about all of it- even though he doesn't specifically admit to it. He looks at the world with such a curiosity and sincerity... And he is the one who is trying to find the truth, to try to find his dad because he misses him. It is such a beautiful optimism, such a hope for life! Yes- he is having a hard time with it all- the shrink telling him that maybe something GOOD can come out of his dad's death, his mom having Rob in her life, how everyone is moving on- and he cannot. He cannot- because I think he didn't say his final goodbye... not the way it was supposed to be anyway. And so he instinctively is trying to fix the problem, to make his dad come alive again. And for this amount of time- his dad is. And that is why it was so important for Oskar to hear from Abby's ex-husband what he was LIKE, because he just wanted to hear someone ELSE praise him, to tell him the things he already knew. Sometimes people can be reincarnated through our impressions about them- a part of them is still alive because they continue to live in our own world. These impressions give them immortality.
And the most poetic part of it is that both Oskar and his Grandma (who had also lost her husband) both wish for things to go backwards- all of it to REWIND to a point where they felt safe, and to live within that moment forever. And in a way though, they DO, because they do not forget about it. I think it lives within them and IS them because they loved these people with all of their heart, these people were their WORLD and gave them meaning in life. Grandma gave up everything and joined her husband into being stuck in time... and in a way they BOTH lived for the Anna, whom they both loved more than they loved each other... and that is to the point where she wanted to return, back to where they were in bed- back to the childhood- back to a regret-because the same thing goes for Oskar- instead of I LOVE YOU at the end of the story, he said:
"Dad?'
'Yeah, buddy?'
'Nothing."I don't know if that is a huge part of the story- but I still think it's important. Maybe they both don't regret it, just that they CANNOT say these things. Which I mean I agree, for me it is the same as well. But you know, if you could go back, knowing all the things you know now, I think you should live, like the grandfather says, "why didn't I learn to treat everything like it was the last time, my greatest regret is how much I believed in the future". It's not that we should party and go crazy (referencing the whole YOLO culture of today). But understand that everything can change in a moment, "Everything in the history of the worldcan be proven wrong in one moment." We are temporary! And we must live that way! I think one of the messages is that we should tell the person what we feel at that time, for it can be the most important thing we could have done in our life.
Speaking of feelings, it is very interesting that so many characters are incapable of telling each other their feelings. Looking at the grandma/grandpa relationship. One cannot say that it is ABNORMAL in any way, it's just that so many things would have been different, YEARS could have been saved, if they would have communicated correctly, instead of hiding away from each other, and maybe from themselves. It is a journey, it is a process, I sure know, to tell one what you really think. They both wrote pages and pages (some blank), but could not take them from the "inside to the outside" because they saw this BARRIER (as with the bookshelves filled with books). So grandpa stopped talking, and grandma never really addressed the problems. As opposed to Oskar, which we should admire here, is that he also has problems being truthful TO HIMSELF, but yet- he still tries to find a solution in his own way- which is going about town calling up every person unde the last name of Black. That is more than grandpa/grandma have every done... Anyway they kind of finally figure things out at the end- ironic that a death brings them back to "life".
My question is though: what is the Extremely Loud part of the title? Maybe when Mr. Black first heard sound for the first time, and experienced the most humble appreciation for life? How life can be so spontaneous and just breathtaking. The first sound he heard was the wings of birds flying...
I think this book gives us an apprection for life- while dealing with a death. That life DOES move on, that we DO keep on living, and yet, remember all of those memories, all of those experiences that make us US... I'm not sure whether that makes any sense...but all the same!
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