Jonathan Safran Foer: Novels can learn from poetry

Interview with American writer Jonathan Safran Foer, in which he reflects on the power of literature in general and poetry in particular. Foer also argues that art always has a personal point of departure, where the artist confronts the world and rearranges it.

In this interview Jonathan Safran Foer (born 1977) reflects on various media and cultural activities. Personally, he is fascinated by film, but at all the critical moments of life Foer has been drawn to the unique power of literature, and especially poetry. However, all true art and culture has a common ground, Foer says. Unlike most other activities in society, art and culture are produced without a direct function and solely for their own sake. Foer argues that every work of art -- whether it is a painting, a book, a film or a piece of music -- is highly subjective at heart. Foer further explains why his novels often revolve around the theme of the family. "How can you not write about it," he asks, "since everybody is confronted with the subject, even those who have lost their family or grew up without it?" It would be much more relevant, he claims, to ask J.K. Rowling why she writes about wizards.

Jonathan Safran Foer was interviewed by Synne Rifbjerg.

Camera: Troels Kahl and Martin Kogi

Produced by: Kamilla Bruus and Synne Rifbjerg, 2012

Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art.

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Supported by Nordea-fonden.

People often talk about the death of literature

I think people have been speaking about it since shortly after

the first work of literature was ever made

but there's more and more talk about it

and propelled by diminishing readership,

by what feels like an increasing apathy, or even anxiety , or even

mistrust of literature and the movement towards screens, you know everything beign on a screen

and what would that mean for books which

aren't very well served on a screen, it's not

that you can't read a book on a screen perfectly well, but you can't read a book on a screen

that also has email and your calendar and texting, books can't compete with those kind of media

so , we wonder what people will read books

and i think that there are still things and there will always be things that only

literature can do, only literature can communicate

i don't think literature is necessarily any better whatever that means than film or dance or music,

in fact i'm often drawn personally more to film and dance than i am to literature

but i know that there are moments in my life where i need literature and only literature

So for example, the mother of my oldest friend passed away a week ago and I went

to visit her in Washington DC, I live in New York and i was quite worried about what to say and

how to fill what i thought might be very awkward, very painful silences

and I brought poems, about 20 poems, and I read them to her and we talked about them

and in that moment when we are together, we are confronting this, you know the biggest moment of life

whih is death. we relied on poetry and I think that poems and stories and novels are very helpful

exactly when we most need language, the most sort of dire, or urgent or existential moments of life.

Novels are meant to be read over the course of many hours or of many days

and even a story takes half an hour to read, and I just wasn't sure in this case what her energy

level would be, so I wanted them to be quite small, but eventhough that's the case, it's also true

that poetry is the most condensed form and literature

and in certain ways it's the most pure form.

I don't think that novels are any less good than poetry but i think that novels have a lot

to learn from poetry, in terms of what's possible, how direct on can be, how concentrated

language can be and how evocative and resonant.

You know, sometimes I feel novels make the mistake of being too much like their own description

somebody says ''what's this book about''

my dream is to write a novel where somebody would have to say ''i could tell you, I suppose,

but that would really miss the point, you'd just have to read it'' That to my mind is a good novel

a novel that it's its own synopsis, it's an expanded version of this synopsis, comes awfully

close to television actually, I think that novels can still do what poetry does in terms of

being kind of ineffable or mysterious or not quit graspable, just on a much larger scale

All of my life i've been more drwan to the visual than to literature and even still

when i'm feeling like i can't remember why i wanted to be a writer, i don't go to books, i go to paintings

or to sculpture. To me the distinctions have been drawn too sharply

the difference between musician, a writer, an artist a dancer, we've categorised them

segregated them, so that there's very litle overlap, but in fact they're just people

who want to make things that you could say have no use, you know everything in life has a use

the person who made the camera that this is being shot with, made so it records something like this

and television or computer that someone's watching it on was made with specific functions in mind

a bridge is made so that people can go from one land mass to another

novels and paintings and songs they might really have effects in the world, they might be political,

they might be entertaining, they might be objects of commerce, but they're not really made for

any of those reasons, I think they were made for their own sake

I think that anyone who makes something for its own sakem, whether you try to have it published

or whether you're just rearrenging twiggs on the ground because it pleases you

people who do that are artists and because we live in a world in which you have to have a job

and it's expected that you'll grow within your job

and because we like to have an answer to what is it that you do.

you know you meet someone at a party, they say ''what do you do?''

it makes us uncomfortable not to have an answer, but the truth is, the different art forms are

much more similar than they are different

When i'm not working on a book, I am somebody who just moves through the world and sees things

and tries to remember them, but usually doesn't

hears jokes and tries to remember them but usually doesn't

and so on, and has ideas that disappear

but when i'm writing i save those things

so that i can use them, you know rearrange them

nothing comes from nothing. I think, there's an impression that books or art

making art is a much more romantically creative act than it is, as if inspiration strikes

and suddenly something appears, but it hasn't been my experience at all.

it's much more about beign attentinve to what's around and starting to know what you like

and what you find useful and then collecting those things and then figuring out what the most

pleasing arrangement of them is for you

there's nothing objective about it, it's not the case that someone will necessarily like it

but it really does feel like making collage with the whole world as you're a cuboard of

things to arrange. Certainly in art i think, most important things happen in the subconscious level

when i approach a writing project i don't think of it like that

in fact, and i say this not as a joke or to disparage myself, i really don't think about much at all.

I'm very open to what do I feel like workign on, what's interesting to me right now, what am i curious about

but i never think what the potential use of something will be, like i said before

there's a quality of art that's useless

in the very very best way, it's the highest compliment i can pay

and if i started thinking about what i would achieve for myself psychologically

or in search of meaning or catharsis, that's just another kind of use

in almost the same way like trying to make something you would sell for money

it's not to say that these two things might, you know, wouldn't be good in your life,

but i don't think that they make a good work of art they're not a good starting point.