Extremely Loud
& Incredibly Close is filled with spaces; those spaces are filled with
meaning. It permeates the very fiber of the book. Space as a conceptual framework of the novel
functions similarly to a particular definition of “space:” as the expanse in
which all things are located and all events occur.[1] Foer fills his spaces with parts of the
narrative not communicated through the words on the page. There are literal spaces between the words
and even spaces in many of the photographs.
Then there are figurative spaces in between the characters and even
within the characters, as they distance themselves with emotions and
intimacy.
To
illustrate just how much Foer has infused this framework of space into the
novel and how it functions as a theme as well as a mode of narrative, let’s
look at two pertinent examples.
1. The
“Falling Man” photograph.
The functionality of the flip-book effect at the end
of the novel depends on the space between the pages. Presented any other way,—even with words—the ending
couldn’t achieve the same effect. The
picture is also divided almost in half, with one of the towers of the WTC
taking up the left half and the right half being filled with mostly negative
space, at least in the first photograph.
As the reader flips the pages, that space is gradually filled with its
subject, the falling man, except in this iteration he isn’t falling, but flying
upwards. The final photo in the series
shows the lefthand side completely empty—but is it? In the context of the other photos, we learn
that the space is actually full to bursting with meaning in a reversal of the
normal conception of how space works.
You may be able to reverse the action of the photograph, but you can
never reverse the action of history.
Notice also that the reader has the power to flip the pages in the
opposite way, the action of which actually reflects reality. This would require a reversal of the
conception of how books themselves take up space: we think of them as
progressing from left to right. I think
Foer places most of what he has created as the theme of space in this one
photograph and what he does with it.
2. The
tower of black text (284).
In what might be the most formally innovative chapter
in the novel, Oskar’s grandfather uses multiple techniques of communication
that move away from the use of words.
The chapter culminates with a tower of jumbled text that forms as the
words themselves move closer and closer together. This is a significant image in the novel,
indicating that spaces are required between
words for there to be any meaning at all, not just on a typographical level but
also a psychological and linguistic level.
Still, meaning is dependent on the order of words set in the space of
the page. They follow from left to right
with a set amount of space in between.
This tower (perhaps a significant image in its own right, without
considering its deeper-level implications) eschews that normative conception of
space to show that we, as readers, need space
in order to read at all. So if readers
need space to understand, so too do the characters need space to “read” each
other. Even with its distancing quality,
if the characters come too close together, such as Oskar and Abby Black in a
significant passage, then physical features along with emotional features are
obscured.
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