Dear...

Oskar tells some of the Blacks his email address. If you were to send Oskar an email, what would you tell him? Alternate option: if you were applying for J.S. Foer's NYU writing class, "Writing the Impossible," what would you tell him about your experience reading Extremely Loud?

My Feelings

For this post, I want you to write about whatever interests you with respect to the novel.

Here's what interests me at the moment: I find that I have a hard time talking about this book sometimes. I can analyze Oskar & his psychological makeup, and how the hurt and pain and confusion and guilt result in his endearing idiosyncrasies, crazy outbursts, and the obsessive quality of his lock-and-key search. I can talk about the things that make me laugh, like the Hamlet scene and the session with Dr. Fein. But I have a hard time talking about the things that really move me, and there are a lot of them, because I don’t know what else to say except that they move me. The chapter from the grandmother’s perspective, My Feelings (p. 174), is like this. Thomas and grandma have such opposite responses to the tragic losses of their lives, one drawing an iron curtain around himself (nothing), the other become a moth flying toward a light (something). One lacks courage, the other confidence. Grandma can certainly be frustrating in her lack of independence and confidence. On the other hand, though, I understand her. I understand why she would give a trick-or-treater dressed as a ghost two $100 bills because she was paying the ghost of Anna to go away. (It’s like Holden Caulfield paying the nuns $10, as if money can buy back your innocence.) I understand why she would be willing to compromise a lot, practically everything, to feel the security and comfort and warmth that comes with basic human connection. And while Thomas’s inability/unwillingness to live is also frustrating, it makes more sense after hearing his account of the firebombing of Dresden. How could he live after that? After losing not only the love of his life, but his unborn child, his family, everything. Add to that the guilt of leaving his family to look for Anna. I won’t even mention having to shoot an ape, twice, who looked at him with “understanding” but not “forgiveness.” The two of them are like magnets pushed apart by some repellent force (something, nothing; something, nothing). The conversation in the airport, played out by pointing to phrases already written in the notebook, is heartbreaking. Nobody pointed at, I love you — because nobody could. It is a very sad thing, in real life not just books, to hear older people look back at their life with wistful regret. If I were able to live my life again, she says, I would kiss my piano teacher. And send ugly photographs. Makes you want to do things — listen to the voice that speaks to the beating of your heart.

What interests you?

:)

Guts ball?

So... no lifeguard, no gas station scene, no Chief on the fishing trip, no Doctor on the fishing trip, no Combine, no shower scene, no over-the-top Christ symbolism, no fog, no broken glass, no ripped uniform, no exposing of Nurse Ratched's breasts, no Harding's wife, no sexist themes whatsoever, no Chief getting EST, no guts ball, no geese, no moon, no dog ... and, yet, somehow still a powerful film. I'd like you to write about whatever you like here about the movie, the book, and how the two are similar and different. Here are a few questions to get you going:
1) Kesey started as a consultant on the film but left two weeks into production because, apparently, he didn't like the direction it was going. Can you see why?
2) Screenwriters and filmmakers have to make huge cuts from a novel to get it to fit into a two-hour movie. Do you think they made any mistakes in the editing process in writing this screenplay? In other words, did they leave out any scenes from the book that would have given the film more weight? Any tactical mistakes?
3) Budding screenwriters/directors: can you think of any way that Kesey's larger message about society could have been included in the film? Clearly they didn't want to go the route of the voice over -- probably a good choice.