In Jonathan Safran Foer’s second novel, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, sound recording intensifies Oscar Schell’s trauma of the loss of his father in the World Trade Center on 9/11 as he is able to relive his father’s voicemails from the day of the attack over and over. Oskar feels forced into silence through a sense of complicity because the recordings provides a reminder of his inability not only to save his father but to even answer the phone to talk to him that morning. These recordings haunt him as he searches for visual evidence of his father’s death, such as those of the “Falling Man,” as if the sound recording itself cannot provide enough closure for his father’s death.
In The Audible Past, Jonathan Sterne describes sound recording as a “resonant tomb,” which offers “the exteriority of the voice with none of its interior self-awareness” (290). Foer’s novel acknowledges this, but shifts the role of the recording to the interior.
I will argue that although sound recordings haunt Oscar throughout the novel, and he is searching for a visual representation, sound is also the best medium for healing for his loss. One of the first things that Oscar tells his reader is that he wishes he could invent a type of microphone that could be swallowed so everyone could hear what each other’s hearts’ sounded like (eventually syncing up “like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time”). This might at first seem contrary to the effects of the other sound recordings of the novel—the answering machine tapes from Oscar’s father—but instead they both ultimately reveal an opening for interior healing. Oscar’s own healing can serve as a model for a larger cultural healing: the external absence representation of the trauma (the unavoidable visual absence Twin Towers) can be filled instead through sound with the Sonic Memorial Project.
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Tony: This will make a good essay. Your abstract reads Foer’s novel through the “resonant tomb” thesis in Sterne. Sound is tied to truth, evidence; this is doubly so with the tie to the traumatic event of 9/11. The recordings attempt to index the horror and scope of the event. The interior is the interior of the event of 9/11, and all the voices contained there. How does this play out in the multimedial/experimental quality of the novel (including the typography, as I recall)? Can this be considered in some way as sound? As exteriorizations and eruptions of sound onto the surface of the page?
ReplyDeleteAt the core of this is the role of sound in healing from trauma; so, how is sound bound to trauma? Clearly, we deal here with the concept of sound and trauma, but how are these concepts bound together?
This sounds great, Tony! I really like the tie to The Sonic Project (I didn't know that it existed). I hope to think of something actually helpful to say and post again tomorrow (Tuesday 4-28).
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ReplyDeleteHi Tony,
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like a paper I would want to read! I like Sandy's questions about sound and trauma. They make me think of the news replaying 911 calls. They seem to be an attempt at "index[ing] the horror and scope of an event" (to use Sandy's words). But they also seem strangely voyeuristic and exploitative---the viewers get to hear someone's dying words, the channel boosts its ratings. Also, I'm thinking of how these 911 calls, or messages in Foer's novel, might function differently depending on if they are public or private. What does it mean to be in possession of a recording like this? And does it change once it is shared?
I don't know if any of this helps. But your paper does sound very promising.
--Matt
This is similar to how smell is attached to memory, and I like exploring the idea of how strongly (and under researched) sound recalls memory. In a larger technological sense, we now have ways to remember and (sort of) interact with the dead--how some are healing and other aren't. It makes me think of people leaving messages on a deceased friend's myspace or facebook account, or, like the novel, relistening to messages, etc. I wonder if these technologies have actually hindered our ability to efficiently grieve and continue with life--and not that grief can be quantified, but death used to be so much more a part of life, and now it's this distant thing that we are out of touch with and think of as morbid and terrible, when really it's the only thing every human being has in common. Anyway--I'm getting off my point here, and I didn't really have a point--I don't really know how to help with your thesis, but this topic and concept is interesting, appealing, and intriguing. Good luck.
ReplyDeleteHm...I agree with everything everyone else has said. The fact that those remnants of his father still exist due to the available technology is interesting. It makes sense that the sound recordings he has of his father would make it actually difficult for closure since sound in a way infuses life and makes current something that is no longer current (or alive).
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