“On our way to dig up Dad’s empty coffin”

• Main Author: Caroline Magnin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Centre de Recherche "Texte et Critique de Texte" 2018-11-01
• Series: Sillages Critiques
• Subjects: Jonathan Safran Foer; trauma; absence; silence; prints; emptiness
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/sillagescritiques/7489

This article means to discuss the question of trauma in relation to absence in the 2005 novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer. This study intends to highlight the aesthetic strategies used by the novelist which result in the fact that absence is not simply a topic but informs the very structure of the book. The traumatic event resists any inscription into language as well as into the subject’s consciousness. It is named only with great difficulty, and hides behind blank pages, ellipses, and photographs which show without naming, and take over when language falls short. The reader needs to go look for clues, prints – he/she is the one who needs to fill in the blanks, to read the silence caused by absence, and overcome the obstacles to his/her reading experience.