THE BENEFIT OF DISTANCE

The NYT Magazine article about author Jonathan Safran Foer has the feel of an elaborate hoax, as if he's a Sidd Finch for the literary set.

Comments

[Dan]

Courage.

[Cherkis]

Hardly a hoax since his last book was pretty damn good...What's hoax-y about a too-smart, too-young, white-rich-boy whose shy and nerdy and a writer. Sounds like a stereotype not a fantasy...

[Matt]

Is it good? I read a section of it and it drove me crazy. Is there a way to read that article without paying for it?

[Tooch]

Yeah, but does his heater crack 160 mph?

[Rick]

I think you can read the entire article here...

...and I've been trying for ten minutes, but have failed to locate a hilarious send-up the New York Observer did after this NY Times profile was published. Its conceit was that the author had the "missing" emails from Jonathan Safran Foer to the adoring journalist who wrote the Times article. And at the risk of "you had to be there," you have to trust me that it was hilarious. Of course, no trace of it remains online, though I did access it through Gawker.

[Pop Cesspool]

Are you sure it was the Observer? I poked around there a little bit, and couldn't find anything, even in the archive.

[Pop Cesspool]

OK, here they are, from Tom Scocca's Off The Record column, courtesy of Google's cache:

Incredibly, Incredibly Close: Deborah Solomon on novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, New York Times Magazine, Feb. 27:

[Our correspondence] came to include, in scarcely more than a month, some 150 e-mail messages from Foer, many of them wickedly hilarious, others gravely literary, and running to thousands of words.

"That's a lot to think about," Foer wrote with his usual intensity. "It would take 1,000 letters just to scratch the surface, and I doubt the scratch would be too deep. I'll give it a shot. When I come back I'll get started with letter #1."

No. 1: I'm back now from walking the dog. You had asked me what I meant by giving you a piece of blank paper from the desk of Isaac Bashevis Singer: Was it "a comment on the futility of texts," or "an evocation of all the beautiful ideas and feelings that remain to be inscribed on that great blank page known as the future"? I'm starting to think that perhaps it was both. Or neither. Or some combination of the two.

No. 3: I must again stress, despite the source of that blank paper, and despite the portrait of Singer on my wall, and despite the fact that I, too, use three names, that it would be inaccurate to compare or equate myself to Singer in any way.

No. 15: That was a beautiful passage you wrote, about how when we said goodbye at 4 p.m., "the fading daylight lent the moment a veiled, elegiac feeling, an unsettling suggestion of oblivion." Sometimes I weep at the end of the day. And I wonder: Is the sun truly going away from us, or are we the ones who are going away from it?

No. 23: It was kind or perceptive of you to say that I "might be called a European novelist who happens to be writing in America." In the end, I think we are all sometimes prisoners of plate tectonics.

No. 120: I was walking George in the park again earlier this hour when she suddenly lunged and gobbled up half the remains of a dead squirrel. Five minutes later, she vomited it all over the grass. She vomited it up so easily and nonchalantly, it gave me a pang. Dogs have such pure, honest reactions to things—both coming and going.

No. 152: You don't think it seems too aggressively butch for me to call my female dog "George," do you? For what it's worth, I adopted a tomcat this past weekend. I have named him Princess Jasmine Fluffytoes.

No. 274 or 275 (depending): Remember how I sent you that e-mail while I was waiting to meet up with you, so you'd get it when you got back from the interview? I am sending you this e-mail in the middle of writing another e-mail, so it gets there sooner. Wait till you see what I've already told you!

No. 338: Wrting this on my new BlackBerry frmo the bathroom. I'm hvaing a little troouble getting used to thesse tiny keys. But it occurred to me that every trip to the bathroom is a little act of letting go. I needed to tell you that.

No. 339: Well, not every act. If you're just brushing your teeth, for instance. But even that, really. Suppose you brushed your teeth and you spat out a little strand of meat that had been stuck there and then you got hit by a truck? That would have been your last meal, and you would have missed the very last part of it.

No. 443: Paper towels, dish soap (unscented), mushrooms, milk (2 percent, skim). Am I forgetting anything? Oh, onions.

No. 516: The pineapple has such a tough, leathery skin. It's almost an imposture to drink pineapple juice; it's hardly a true experience of the pineapple. Drinking pineapple juice is life made easy. It's fraudulence. I adore my pineapple juice, though.

No. 590: if the world were already silent, what would stillness sound like? then i think it would sound like the soft rustle of the newest leaves in a spring breeze. everyone would feel awkward.

No. 627: I told you that I wished I could talk like a black person. It's more than that, really: I wish, in the give and take between us, that I could give myself to you as a strong black man. You could receive my thoughts as if I were making strong love to you on satin sheets with the music of Barry White or Marvin Gaye playing—making love to you with my large penis, which would not be an offensive racial stereotype yet would be a penis of unmistakable substance. Instead I feel as if I'm humping away in a rabbity fashion on a futon, after a dinner of takeout Italian, with Dido on the stereo, and I'm hoping to make up for my shortcomings with earnest cunnilingus in a little while. This is all just a figure of speech!

No. 820: Princess Jasmine Fluffytoes is asleep in my lap right this second.

No. 875: Writing is above all, I think, an act of faith. You put the words out there and hope. For instance, I can write "pat your head," but I have no way of knowing whether you would actually pat your head in response. Or "stand up." Now sit down. Stand up again. Blink three times. See? Pure faith.

No. 999: I feel as if I made a hopelessly inadequate profile subject. You are too kind to have paid so much attention to me. I really would be glad if I could give you the chance to do another profile. Maybe this one could be good enough to be on the cover. I know a literary novelist is less important than movie stars, especially Oscar week, but maybe there won't be movie stars. I will try to give you everything you need. I am putty in your hands.

No. 1,000: It wouldn't have to be the cover!