美国国家公共电台 NPR 'Here I Am' Balances Domestic Strife And Global Crisis

'Here I Am' Balances Domestic Strife 1 And Global Crisis 

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Jonathan Safran Foer's first novel, "Everything Is Illuminated," dug into his family's history with the Holocaust 3. His latest novel explores a different aspect of Judaism. It's called "Here I Am." The title comes from the Bible, the story where God calls on Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. This book is set in present-day Washington, D.C., where a Jewish family goes through a domestic crisis while at the same time, a geopolitical crisis unfolds on the other side of the world.

The novel asks a question that many people wrestle 4 with - how do we put our daily problems in perspective when real problems all over the world cause death, starvation and destruction? I asked Jonathan Safran Foer to try to answer that question. How do we reconcile our own domestic crises with the truly awful things that are happening thousands of miles away?

JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER: I think that's absolutely right. And conversely, how do we remember to care about the world when the Volvo needs to get inspected or you're going to get a second ticket?

SHAPIRO: Right.

FOER: Like, striking the balance of caring about what happens inside one's home and what happens outside one's home and not accidentally being somebody who doesn't really care about either - it's a struggle. So, you know, this book is about this American family - a middling TV writer and an architect who had these dreams of making great buildings but is now doing bathroom and kitchen renovations - and their marriage and their three children and sort of as you've suggested, their very, very domestic problematic living. You know, sort of the busyness of doing.

On the back burner is this global crisis of an earthquake in the Middle East. And the book is largely about how these characters - and in particular this one character, Jacob Bloch, tries to strike the balance between the different identities that he has and between the different - what he thinks of, what he puts in the terms of big and small, you know, lives he's living.

SHAPIRO: There's just one line that really distills this for me very early in the book where a character is shopping at a very upscale hardware store. She picks up a sort of doorknob and you write, (reading) it was elegant, and it was obnoxious 6. And in a world where the bodies of Syrian children washed up on beaches, it was unethical, or at least vulgar.

FOER: (Laughter) I hope and I think that that's the kind of stuff of this book, the momentary 7 pause and reflecting on what kind of life we're living. Those are the central questions, actually, that each character in his or her own way asks - you know, the question of what kind of life am I living? And to what extent is it being determined 8 by the world around me? Or to what extent is it not responsive enough to the world around me?

SHAPIRO: And I think this is a question that every human being who pays attention wrestles 9 with on a regular basis. Having spent 600 or so pages exploring these questions, have you come up with an answer for yourself? I mean, you're obviously not right now working at a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Syria. You're living your life as an author in New York. How do you go on buying nice doorknobs in a world where the bodies of Syrian children wash up on beaches?

FOER: Well, you know, I don't spend my time buying nice doorknobs. But I spend my time doing something that is probably - whose good is equally unobvious, which is writing stories. And I think about this all the time. For years, I wrote in a cafe in my neighborhood against a huge pane 10 of glass, a big wall of windows. And on the other side often would be sitting a homeless guy. Every day, we would see each other. We were sitting literally 11 one foot away from each other, just separated by this pane of glass.

And so the question was begged - you know, why am I doing what I'm doing when I'm a fairly able person? I was fairly well-educated. If I devoted 12 my life to the problem of hunger in my neighborhood I would not solve it, but I would make some kind of dent 5. It would make - my life would make an impression on that problem. You know, no obstetrician comes home at the end of a week and says, oh god, I delivered 13 babies this week. What's the point? The point is so plainly obvious. The point of telling stories is not obvious.

But the Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert once said that imagination is the instrument of compassion 13. That, you know, we can learn all kinds of facts about another person, but when we are able to share our imagination with another it evokes 14 compassion in a way that nothing else really does. And a lot of the - what we would call big problems in the world are problems of logistics, they're problems of politics and they're problems of compassion. It's not to say that, you know, sharing stories is going to help, you know, the poor Syrian immigrant. But it's got to be an important part of any kind of society that's going to be wrestling with the big problems.

SHAPIRO: The book explores on many levels what it means to be Jewish. And there's a section where you write about Jews' relationship with words. Will you read this part of the book?

FOER: I would be ever too happy to. (Reading) Judaism has a special relationship with words. Giving a word to a thing is to give it life. Let there be light, God said, and there was light. No magic, no raised hands and thunder. The articulation 15 made it possible. It's perhaps the most powerful of all Jewish ideas - expression is generative. It's the same with marriage. You say I do, and you do.

SHAPIRO: How does this special relationship between Jews and words extend to you as a Jewish writer?

FOER: I don't know. You know, that's the truth. I don't know. One of my favorite sayings, which doesn't refer specifically to writing but feels like it does, is a bird is not an ornithologist 16. Just because you are something, just because you do something doesn't mean that you can explain it or that you intend it. And one of the things that I've been constantly surprised by is the way that Judaism has sort of woven itself through my imagination. I'm not a religious person in the sense of observance, but it definitely was the soil in which my imagination was planted. And apparently 17, it has a kind of irrepressible influence on me.

SHAPIRO: Yeah, I'm sure nobody sets out to be a Jewish writer any more than they would set out to be a gay writer or a Latino writer. And yet it seems looking on your career that you have become a Jewish writer, per se.

FOER: What does the per se mean? (Laughter) I think it's one of those statements that's hard to just say without kind of winking 18 or shrugging or qualifying. That's my instinct as well. There's something about it that is a little itchy. It doesn't feel like a comfortable identity to settle into either because it's unintentional or because it might feel in some way limiting. And the thing that I value most about writing is the way that it is without limitations.

SHAPIRO: In a way, it almost brings me back to the title of the book, "Here I Am," these sort of three declarative syllables 19 that don't go any deeper in describing who you are or where you are or why you are or what you are. Merely a declaration - here I am.

FOER: You know, in a way, it is - it's each hero's - each character, excuse me, in the book's journey, is to what is the meaning of that statement. And the final words of the book - and I don't think I'm spoiling anything to share this - are I'm ready given by the hero, Jacob, in a very peculiar 20 context to say those words. And the thing that he is ultimately ready for is to claim an identity, an identity that can be unconditional 21, that isn't dependent on context but is authentic 22.

SHAPIRO: Jonathan Safran Foer, thanks so much for your time.

FOER: Thank you. It was a pleasure.