Love? Think. Comment. Let's Dialogue.

I'm beginning this post without really knowing what it's about. I'm just in one of those write-about-something moods, I guess.

I'm nearly halfway through Jonathan Safran Foer's first book (he edited one before, but this is his first novel), Everything is Illuminated. You may have heard of the movie; if you haven't, rent it. I'd like to suggest the book to you, but no one seems to make time for fiction novels. I certainly do. In the book, there are a couple of quotes that I love:

"...and everything was held up as another small piece of proof that i can be this way, it doesn't have to be that way; if there is no love in the world, we will make a new world, and we will give it heavy walls, and we will furnish it with soft red interiors, from the inside out, and give it a knocker that resonates like diamond falling to a jeweler's felt so that we should never hear it. Love me, because love doesn't exist, and I have tried everything that does (p. 82)."

and also:

"And when she said, Father, I love you, she was neither naive nor dishonest, but the opposite: she was wise and truthful enough to lie (p. 83)."

I am not sure why the first quote strikes me the way it does, but...it does. The second, however, is possibly the most painfully honest line in any book I have ever read. So often, we lie to people because we love them...or perhaps because we don't. Do we even know what love is? It's so complicated when we break it down (or build it up, or stack it sideways, or diagonally, or whichever way we create our notions of love). The entire relationship between the characters of that father and daughter (He is not biologically her father; he took her in right after she was born, when he was in his seventies, because her parents were killed in an accident. He never told her) was made up of a muddled notion of love. Love was never found between the two, but instead, they loved the idea of loving one another. Is that what love is? Are we all just really in love with loving others? It's something to think about. I'm not saying that love doesn't exist, but with what are we in love? Perhaps we are all just in love with love instead of people. This is not to sound callous; I am in no way saying I do not love my family and friends. I'm just thinking, and I hope I have inspired you to do the same.

From my unclear beginning, I think I'm satisfied with the finished post. I hope you are, too.

Comment. I know you read it, so leave me your thoughts.


- le suz