Jonathan Safran Foer Kind Of Hoping This Tibet Thing Turns Into The Next Global Atrocity
It turns out that the skilled Manhattanite author and narrativizer of the Holocaust and 9/11 is enjoying life, spending time with his young family, and waiting for the murder of monks in Tibet to turn into the next colossal, generation-defining atrocity that results in mass deaths across Asia, and possibly a critically acclaimed best-selling novel.
“I’ve got my eye on the Far East right now,” Foer confesses, swirling a foamy mug of black tea with a cinnamon stick. “There’s some good people dying over there that could really be used to tell the story of the Jewish race - but not as an allegory. I hate allegories.”
Foer says he has an idea of what kind of character he wants in his next book. He just doesn’t know what tragedy their personal quirks are in response to.
“So far, I have a kid who never takes his headphones off - except when a Rolling Stones song is playing - an estranged mother, a clown who is afraid of make-up, and the Dalai Lama, but not the real Dalai Lama - a character named Dalai Lama by his self-loathing Chinese parents,” said Foer. “And they all come together for some reason in Los Angeles. Or New Jersey.”
Foer then dropped his cinnamon stick in his tea, to which he chuckled and said, “That’s so postmodern.”
Foer says he is through with adverbs, having exhausted them stylistically with his second book, “Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close.”
“I’m really into nouns now,” said Foer. “No one really has any idea how important nouns are in our vocabulary. But ‘Don’t Touch Me Until I Tell You To’ - that’s the name of it so far - is essentially a catalog of nouns.”
“And verbs, too. Verbs are important.”