Final Essay: The Resonant Towers

Here is a link to my FINAL ESSAY.

This essay came as a result of both a love for the novel Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and its remarkable handling of sound and trauma. Interestingly, in a critical essay from Philippe Codde (referenced for other reasons within the essay), Foer has discussed a deep interest in visual representations of 9/11, saying, "'To speak about what happened on September 11 requres a visual language'" (247). I found it intriguing that he would cite this as an explanation for all of the photopgraphy in the text, while it seemed to me to be a novel deeply rooted in audio.

In addition, the novel received very mixed reviews--but I am confident that Foer will play a significant role in the literary world in the near future (between this deeply moving text and the more widely lauded Everything is Illuminated, Foer could become quite a force). Literary criticism on the text is hard to come by, and contributing to a mostly-untrodden field is important to me.

This text would likely work in any publication that focuses on contemporary literary criticism. Although our focus is on sound, this essay's handing would not likely be as technical or as centered as works that fit in, for example, Sound Unbound.