Safran Foer Pushes Boundaries

"I'm not that interested in plot, not that interested in character, just in telling the story. There's no point, there's no moral to what I write. I wanted to become a writer when I first encountered the works of Joseph Cornell. It was a sublime kind of feeling. He used lots of thoughts, lots of feelings that transcend language. Whatever can get me to that is what I'll do. The photographs and pictures (in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close) point out the boundaries of language. I don't write my books as critics would read them. I write as I want to be experienced. I would assume what does it for me would do it for others ... or at least for one or some."

- Jonathan Safran Foer, in an interview with The Brown Daily Herald. Despite these justifications, and despite his obviously huge talent, large chunks of the book in question came across as...sophomoric.