An Interesting Encounter with Jonathan Safran Foer

Greetings everyone! Honestly, this has been my first experience of meeting an author in person. I’ve never had the opportunity to witness an author discuss his own work in my presence and it was a new feeling for me. After hearing the author speak for a while about his book and listening to the answers he gave to the questions posed by my fellow Macaulay classmates, I felt that Mr. Foer was a very interesting and unique individual. Genuinely, I wasn’t highly impressed by the performance he gave on stage and found the answers he gave to people’s questions rather odd. I was expecting something very profound or inspirational to be said by Mr. Foer, but nothing of that sort took place. When I was reading his book, I actually found it quite entertaining and amusing, and could relate to it. I was hoping that Mr. Foer’s personality would be similar to the way he expressed himself through the way he writes. However, I was wrong and what I noticed was when someone asked Mr. Foer a question, he went off topic and talked about something different. Personally, I believe that he wrote a wonderful book, but his personality didn’t seem to reflect the emotions revealed in much of his writings. In addition, I thought an author would demonstrate much pride and joy in his writing, but Mr. Foer didn’t seem to manifest any of these sentiments. In fact, when questions were posed to him by the host, I observed that the answers he gave deviated from what was supposed to be answered. Overall, I did enjoy the Arts Seminar day because of meeting several new people and being exposed to a different kind of environment, but the author’s performance turned me down a little due to his nonchalant and aloof attitude. I do not believe that this performance would be worthy enough as being classified as art, since the author stated that art did not play an essential role in the writing of his book “Incredibly Loud and Extremely Close.” In fact, Mr. Foer himself said that he enjoyed writing as much as he did any other subject and there was no particular reason for him to write this book; it was just an idea that came to him. The word “art,” in my opinion, means a manner in which a person can express his or her emotions either through symbols, writing, and drawing. Basically, art is a way someone can relate to nature or other important aspects of life. Also, for me art is creativity, a chance to let your emotions burst out onto paper, a crucial agent of communication, and is the appreciation of beauty. Truly, I wished the author would have been more vivacious and energetic. Unfortunately, this was not the case and I hope that my next meeting with an author would be somewhat more engaging, and for that matter, more profound in the interpretations of his or her writing. In conclusion, I sincerely appreciate the many books Mr. Foer has written and just hope that he displays more affection towards his accomplishments.