JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

EXTREMLY LOUD & INCREDIBLY CLOSE

Contents

WHAT THE?

WHY I’M NOT WHERE YOU ARE

GOOGOLPLEX

MY FEELINGS

THE ONLY ANIMAL

WHY I’M NOT WHERE YOU ARE

HEAVY BOOTS HEAVIER BOOTS

MY FEELINGS

HAPPINESS, HAPPINESS

WHY I’M NOT WHERE YOU ARE

THE SIXTH BOROUGH

MY FEELINGS

ALIVE AND ALONE

WHY I’M NOT WHERE YOU ARE

A SIMPLE SOLUTION TO AN IMPOSSIBLE PROBLEM

MY FEELINGS

BEAUTIFUL AND TRUE

1

WHAT THE?

What about a teakettle? What if the spout opened and closed when the steam came out, so it would become a mouth, and it could whistle pretty melodies, or do Shakespeare, or just crack up with me? I could invent a teakettle that reads in Dad's voice, so I could fall asleep, or maybe a set of kettles that sings the chorus of 'Yellow Submarine', which is a song by the Beatles, who I love, because entomology is one of my raisons d'etre, which is a French expression that I know. Another good thing is that I could train my anus to talk when I farted. If I wanted to be extremely hilarious, I'd train it to say, 'Wasn't me!' every time I made an incredibly bad fart. And if I ever made an incredibly bad fart in the Hall of Mir-rors, which is in Versailles, which is outside of Paris, which is in France, obviously, my anus would say, 'Ce n'etais pas moi!'

What about little microphones? What if everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hearts through little speakers, which could be in the pouches of our over-alls? When you skateboarded down the street at night you could hear everyone's heart-beat, and they could hear yours, sort of like sonar. One weird thing is, I wonder if every-one's hearts would start to beat at the same time, like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time, which I know about, but don't really want to know about. That would be so weird, except that the place in the hospital where babies are born would sound like a crystal chandelier in a houseboat, because the babies wouldn't have had time to match up their heartbeats yet. And at the finish line at the end of the New York City Marathon it would sound like war.

And also, there are so many times when you need to make a quick escape, but humans don't have their own wings, or not yet, anyway, so what about a birdseed shirt?

Anyway.

My first jujitsu class was three and a half months ago. Self-defense was something that I was extremely curious about, for obvious reasons, and Mom thought it would be good for me to have a physical activity besides tambourining, so my first jujitsu class was three and a half months ago. There were fourteen kids in the class, and we all had on neat white robes. We practiced bowing, and then we were all sitting down Native American style, and then Sensei Mark asked me to go over to him. 'Kick my privates,' he told me. That made me feel self-conscious. 'Excusez-moi?' I told him. He spread his legs and told me, 'I want you to kick my privates as hard as you can.' He put his hands at his sides, and took a breath in, and closed his eyes, and that's how I knew that actually he meant business. 'Jose,' I told him, and inside I was thinking, What the?

He told me, 'Go on, guy. Destroy my privates.'

'Destroy your privates?' With his eyes still closed he cracked up a lot and said, 'You could-n't destroy my privates if you tried. That's what's going on here. This is a demonstration of the well-trained body's ability to absorb a direct blow. Now destroy my privates.' I told him, 'I'm a pacifist,' and since most people my age don't know what that means, I turned around and told the others, 'I don't think it's right to destroy people's privates. Ever.' Sen-sei Mark said, 'Can I ask you something?' I turned back around and told him, 'Can I ask

2

you something?' is asking me something.' He said, 'Do you have dreams of becoming a ju-jitsu master?'

'No,' I told him, even though I don't have dreams of running the family jewelry business anymore. He said, 'Do you want to know how a jujitsu student becomes a jujitsu master?'

'I want to know everything,' I told him, but that isn't true anymore either. He told me, 'A jujitsu student becomes a jujitsu master by destroying his master's privates.' I told him,

'That's fascinating.' My last jujitsu class was three and a half months ago.

I desperately wish I had my tambourine with me now, because even after everything I'm still wearing heavy boots, and sometimes it helps to play a good beat. My most impressive song that I can play on my tambourine is 'The Flight of the Bumblebee', by Nicolai Rim-sky-Korsakov, which is also the ring tone I downloaded for the cell phone I got after Dad died. It's pretty amazing that I can play 'The Flight of the Bumblebee', because you have to hit incredibly fast in parts, and that's extremely hard for me, because I don't really have wrists yet. Ron offered

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