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.

Well, people often talk about the death of literature.

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.

It's been propelled by diminishing readership,

by what feels like an increasing apathy,

or even anxiety or even mistrust of literature

and the movement towards screens, everything being

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 kinds of media.

So we wonder will people read books?

There are still things and there will always be things that

only literature can do, only literature can communicate.

I don't think that literature is necessarily any better,

whatever than 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

when I feel the need for literature and only for literature.

So for example, the mother of my oldest friend

passed away about week ago.

And I went down to visit her in Washington DC.

I live in New York. I was quite worried about what to say

and how to fill what I thought might be very awkward,

or even painful silences. And I brought poems,

about 20 poems. I read them to her and we talked

about them. And in that moment when we, together,

mostly just her, of course, but together, were confronting

this, the biggest moment of life which is death.

We relied on poetry.

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 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 even though that's the case, it's also true

that poetry is the most condensed form of literature

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

I don't think that novels are any less good than poetry

but novels has a lot to learn from poetry

in terms of what's possible, how direct one can be,

how concentrated language can be,

and how evocative and resonant.

Sometimes I think novels make the mistake

of being too much like their own description.

Somebody says, ''What is 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 is its own synopsis,

just an expanded version of its synopsis,

comes awfully close to television actually.

Novels can still do something that poetry

does in terms of being kind of ineffable or mysterious

or not quite graspeable, just on a much larger scale.

All of my life, I have been more drawn to the visual arts

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 actually go to paintings

or to sculpture. To me, the distinctions have been drawn

too sharply. The difference between a musician, a writer,

an artist, a dancer. We've categorized them,

segregated them, so that there's very , very little overlap

but in fact they're all just people who want to make

things that you could say have no use.

Everything in life has a use. The person who made

the camera that this is being shot with, made it

so that it could record something like this.

And a television or a computer that someone's watching

it on was made with specific functions in mind. A bridge

is made so that people can get from one land mass to

another. But novels and paintings and songs really ...

They might have effects in the world --

they might be political, they might be entertaining,

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

really made for any of those reasons. They're just made

for their own sake. Anyone who makes something

for its own sake, whether you try to have it published

or whether you're just rearranging twigs

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 in which

it's expected that you will grow within your job

and because we like to have an answer to the question

'What is it that you do?'

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, 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 nice things

and tries to remember them, but usually doesn't,

and 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, rearrange them.

Nothing comes from nothing. I think that 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 that hasn't been my experience at all. It's much more

about being attentive to what's around and starting to

get to know what you like and what you find useful

and then collecting those things instead of everything.

Collecting those things and then figuring out what

what the most pleasing arrangement of them is for you.

There's nothing objective about it. It's not the case that

someone else will necessarily like it

but it really does feel like making collages with the

whole world as your cupboard of things to arrange.

Certainly in art, the most important things happen

on a 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.

about much at all. I'm just very open to what do I feel like

working on, what's interesting to me right now,

what am I curious about? But I never think about

what the potential use of something would be.

Like I was saying before, there's a quality of art

that is useless in the very, very best way.

That is the very highest compliment I can pay.

And if I started thinking about what I would achieve

for myself psychologically or in search of meaning

or in search of meaning or catharsis,

that's just another kind of use. Just in almost the same

way that trying to make something you could sell

for money is a kind of use. It's not to say that those two

thing might 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.

John [Delulo?] once said,"Nobody writes his first book.

It just happens. At a certain point, you find

that a printer is ... all these pages are coming out.

Oh my God, I can't believe I did this! I believe that.

Maybe it's a little different if you start late in life

incubating an idea for a long time but most people

when they write their first book, at a certain point,

they realize they have a book on their hands.

And the second book is different because then,

you have something that you're responding to,

you have your own expectations -- 'if you published

your first book, you have the world' expectations.

So I found the second book somewhat more difficult

because of that but I started the second book

before my first book was published so in a way,

I was able to escape some of those traps. But

then after I have written two novels, I wrote a work

of non-fiction about eating animals,about animal

farming. I think this is not a coincidence

that I decided to move in a different direction

because I was starting to feel the weight

of momentum. I didn't want to do a third thing

because I've done two previous things. I didn't want

to make a choice about tomorrow because of what

I did yesterday. So maybe even to a fault,

I resisted that and decided to move off

and try something else.

There are a lot of ways of talking about

choices in art. It's a mistake to think that

the way we talk about it retrospectively

as critics, which is very useful and interesting

but it's a mistake that that's the same language

of creation. Somebody once said, I can't remember

who, maybe it was Oscar Wilde, I can't remember.

He said, "There are only two kinds of objects

in the world: those that charm us and those that don't

charm us." Something can be charming in the most

completely simple way and for whatever reason,

it speaks to us. We like it. It is for us.

If it isn't charming, it's mundane. It's not that

we hate it, it's just that it has no great effect on us.

And each person, of course, has his own or her own

sense of what is charming. In a way, writing just

boils down to asking that question again and again

because it's charming or not. Something charming

can mean that it's very painful. It doesn't mean

that it's happy and beautiful. It can mean it's very

ugly, that it is funny. It can mean that it is serious.

It can be tragic. It can be comic.

Charming just means in a certain way,

that it's authentic and exceptional to you.

People often ask me, why don't I write about family

so often. I find that such a weird question.

I don't even know how to answer because the answer

feels so obvious to me. Nobody asks J.K. Rowling

why she writes about wizards so much.

That, to me, is weird. That's a weird choice she made

that requires some explanation because nobody

knows wizards. Nobody interacts with wizards.

Nobody can't fall asleep at night because of their

relationship to wizards but everyone has a family.

Even people whose families are absent.

Maybe especially people whose families are absent.

These are the main themes of life

and the main themes of literature since Genesis

so I assume I will always write about family.

Families is also especially important to me but

whatever will take the form of fathers

and sons-in-laws. Or it will take the form of

a married couple in a comedy. That I don't know.