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November 9, 2008 | 2:11 pm

Jonathan Safran Foer makes me want to vomit

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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“Until now, my identity as a writer,” Jonathan Safran Foer, who wrote “Everything Is Illuminated,” said last week, “has never overlapped with my identity as an American — in the past eight years, my writing has often felt like an antidote or correction to my Americanism. But finally having a writer-president — and I don’t mean a published author, but someone who knows the full value of the carefully chosen word — I suddenly feel, for the first time, not only like a writer who happens to be American, but an American writer.”

When a friend sent that quote to me, I thought I was going to hurl. I didn’t realize by American was such a bad thing, that following in the tradition of Saul Bellow and Philip Roth and Michael Chabon was such a handicap.

Foer’s comment reeked of the same elitism as when the permanent secretary of the Nobel Prize committee fallaciously explained the lack of American Nobel laureates in literature by saying: “The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature. That ignorance is restraining.”

Foer will be at the Celebration of Jewish Books at American Jewish University today. I’ll be stopping by—more on that later—but avoiding his talk.

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Waaaaa!!!! Mommy!!!! Waaaa!!! I lost the election.

Please, Brad. I’m sure Foer is going to wonder what he said to be shunned by you. But, just so we’re clear, I’m unsubscribing from your blog with its own tinge of Jewisher than thou elitism becuase of puerile and whiny posts like this.

Comment by Jon on 11/09/08 at 7:20 pm

I lost the election ... what are you talking about? I wasn’t running for president, and I voted the guy who won.

Your comment, Jon, that you are unsubscribing from this blog seems empty because I find it unlikely you read have more than a few posts. What “tinge of Jewisher than thou elitism” am I, a Christian, demonstrating?

Comment by Brad A. Greenberg on 11/09/08 at 7:37 pm

Really? For the first time? Really? Not that I was a big fan of Reagan ... wait, not that I was A FAN of Reagan, but the guy had an appreciation for a well-chosen word. Clinton too. And, as for American authors ... Read Twain. Read Hemingway. Read Faulkner. I have to believe Foer meant something other than what this quote says because ... Wha? For the first time? Really? REALLY?

Comment by TJ on 11/09/08 at 8:39 pm

After writing this post, TJ, I felt remiss for neglecting exactly those three authors you mentioned. I think I had been primed by my plans later to go to the Celebration of Jewish Books, and because I was in my car I really couldn’t change anything. Thanks for mentioning them.

I actually OK with Foer’s assertion that Obama is the first president to really appreciate the spoken/written word. It doesn’t ring true, but I don’t ind him making that argument. What left me nauseated was this: “my writing has often felt like an antidote or correction to my Americanism.”

Please ...

Comment by Brad A. Greenberg on 11/09/08 at 8:57 pm

That’s the first time I’ve seen that Slate article, and now that all I can think about.

WTF?  America has the most Nobel Prizes for Literature than any other country!

Comment by Alexa on 11/10/08 at 10:50 pm

You guys are missing the point.  Foer is young, for my generation, there are a lot of people that may question America’s actions over the past decade or so and have a feeling, not of anit-americanism, but that America could be better than it has been. The Presidents we have known have been George Bush, Bill Clinton, and George Bush. And while they have all authored books at some level none was identified as a capable writer to the same extent that Obama has been. Foer’s comment merely illustrates a new identity that he now wishes to embrace, that of the American writer. Up until this point he, like so many of his generation, avoided being cast as simply an American because around the world the stigma of intolerance and war mongering that were associated with that word.  Now, with Obama’s election, Foer and other people of his age feel a renewed pride in being American and want to embrace that association rather than turn from it. I feel this is what Foer’s quote embodies.

Comment by gary on 11/14/08 at 11:40 am

amen, Gary… why is everyone so quick to nail him up? oh my Goodness, the fate of Greatness…

Comment by Megan G. Nema on 11/24/08 at 7:16 pm

Why do Americans always feel offended if someone tells them they are not the greatest people in the world? Okay, feel offended: America is NEITHER the greatest nation, NOR do the smartest people in the world live there. Your patriotism is ridiculous. If even an American does not feel (or has not felt) American, that is just the best thing a writer can be.

Comment by Shawna on 8/21/09 at 3:42 pm

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