Lit Action, Live from Summer 2010

I liked what I read of the story "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close." It was not really easy to keep up with it at the beginning because it switched narrators. The second part was more engaging and easier to understand. I think that Oskar is a really smart  child and I admire him his determination. Still, it was a little creepy that they went to the cemetery and dug up his father's grave (even though it was empty). I was surprised to find out that he had been so close to his grandfather. Overall I enjoyed the story.

I actually visited this site to see what people thought about this book.

http://bakaitis.com/book-groups/extremely-loud-incredibly-close-discussi...

Interesting opinions and topics discussed here. This book definitely requires you to think outside of the box. It does not tell you black is black and white is white. I feel like there are a lot of hidden meanings in the book.

The last pages of the book... The man was rising up instead of falling down. What is the significance of this? It was kind of disturbing considering that was a real picture of some guy falling down to his death.

I think a motion picture of this story is coming out in 2012.

Here is another presentation. It is a bit of a memoir with some of the life story stuff I mentioned in class mixed together with some intellectual biography, specifically my experiences with my academic field--Computers and Writing, a discipline that studies how technology changes writing. The video has a voiceover but I performed the piece at a conference last month.

The story is still really sad, yet, like Dusty said in class, the boy's journey brings a sense of closure to himself, as well as the many people he meets on his journey.  The obvious symbol is from the digging up the Dad's grave.  Another note I found interesting is how Oskar mentions you should go to a psychologist if you aren't sad when your father dies.  Yet, in several instances, Oskar holds his emotions in.  This idea of letting emotions free is really important throughout the novel I think.

Up until page 208, the narration alternates from oskar to a flashback written by either grandparent. Starting on page 208 with grandfather's account of the bombing of dresden, there is a back to back narration given by grandfather then grandmother, respectively, in two distinct chapters; p208-216 is his account of the bombing and pages 217-233 is the grandmother's account of the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Its during this grandmother-narrated chapter, that theres a change in the style of narration, for all of her previous entires had been flashbacks to about 50 years previous and this chapter was a flashback of only about 2 years previous. 

So I looked online to see what people's opinion are on the meaning of the title and couldn't find anything. From what I gather, does the title mean that the tragedy/elephant in the room is "extremely loud and incredibly close" and no one talks about it or wants to talk about it? I have no idea. Maybe the meaning of the title is obvious but I can't think of anything. Does anyone know or have an opinion?

  I agree with what Dan said in the last class about the book moving quickly in the second half. As things start coming together, the book gets much more intense. Even though the book does not have a lot of physical action, it is a roller coaster ride emotionally.

  The ending is very intense emotionally, and the author was really able to make the reader feel this. It was very exciting how everything started coming together at the end, and I kept hoping that Oskar would figure out that the renter was his grandfather. I also wondered what was in that lock box, even though it was Oskar's journey that mattered, rather than the end result.

While this book certainly touched on politics, race, and other societal issues, I really felt like it was more about the characters and their relationships to one another. Whether or not the boy accurately represents how America felt at the time or whether he is just a means of conveying the author's opinion seems less important in this book. The setting seemed to me to serve as an appropriate context for the author to explore how people cope and interact with one another in response to traumatic events.

Is Oskar really a nine-year old? Because he writes really well for a boy his age. But then again he seems to do a lot of stuff that seems out of the ordinary for a nine-year old like taking interest in jewelry, speaking French, communicating with Stephen Hawking and investigating cases? He just seems pretty intelligent for his age.

He is also pretty emo from the loss of his father on 9/11. He kind of reminded me of Rorshach from Watchmen because he was walking around the city looking for clues. He also reminded me of the little boy from The Road because of his maturity. He seemed to have lost a lot of his child-like innocence because he had to go through such hardship and he was forced to mature quickly to accommodate his changing surroundings.