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.

(Louisiana channel)

(Jonathan Safran Foer
novels have a lot to learn from poetry)

Well, 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 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?

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 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 a 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.

And 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.

And 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.

And I think that poems and stories and novels are very helpful

exactly when we most need language in 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 its 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 one can be,

how concentrated language can be,

and how evocative and resonant.

You know, sometimes I think novels make the mistake

of being too much like their own description.

You know,omebody 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 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.

I think that 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 sculpture.

To me, the distinctions have been drawn too sharply,

you know, 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.

You know, 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.

And I think that anyone who makes something for its own sake,

whether you try to have it published

or whether you're just, you know, rearranging twigs on the ground

because it pleases you,

people who do that are artists.

And, you know, 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 know, you meet someone at a party, or...

they say ''What do you do?''

It makes us uncomfortable not to have an answer.

But the truth is, you know, 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 kind of 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, you know, 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's not really -- 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 the most pleasing arrangement of them is for you.

There's nothing objective about it.

It's not the case that, you know, someone else will necessarily like it,

but it really does feel like making collage just with, you know,

the whole world as your cupboard of things to arrange.

Certainly in art, I think, the most important things

happen on a subconscious level.

When I approach a writing project, I don't think about it like that.

In fact, and I say this not as a joke or to sort of disparage myself,

but I really don't think about much at all.

It's very -- I'm just very open, you know, 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.

I mean, that is like the very highest compliment I could 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,

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, 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.

Don DeLillo once said:

"Nobody writes his first book. It just happens."

At a certain point, you find the printer is, you know,

all these pages are coming out.

You think: "Oh my God, I can't believe I did this!"

I believe that.

I mean, maybe it's a little different if you start late in life,

and you've been, you know, sort of 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'd 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.

And I think tit'ss not a coincidence that I decided to move in a different direction

because I was starting to feel the weight of momentum.

You know, 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

just because of what I did yesterday.

So maybe even to a fault, I resisted that

and decided to move off and try something else.

I think there are a lot of ways of talking about choices in art.

And 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 -

said: "There are only two kinds of objects in the world:

those that charm us and those that don't charm us."

And, you know, 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 something isn't charming, it's mundane and 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.

And, you know, in a way,

writing just boils down to asking that question again and again,

like, this is 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, it can mean that it is funny,

it can mean that it is serious, it can be tragic, it can be comic.

I think charming really just means, in a certain way,

that it's authentic and exceptional to you.

I mean, people often ask me, why do 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.

You know, 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 even, especially people whose families are absent.

You know, these are the main themes of life

and they've been the main themes of literature since Genesis.

So I assume I'll always write about family.

Families is also especially important to me

but you know, whether it will take the form of fathers and sons-in-laws,

or whether it will take the form of a married couple in a comedy,

that I don't know.

(Louisiana Channel)

(Supported by Nordea Fonden)

(louisiana.dk/channel)