Author casts light on his life and his writing

Author Jonathan Safran Foer said he does not shy away from the September 11 attacks and is unafraid to tell small lies in his books to a room packed full of fans yesterday afternoon.

Foer is the author of two bestselling novels, 2002's Everything is Illuminated and 2005's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, both of which were hailed by critics for their innovative literary style.

The first, a winner of the National Jewish Book Award, deals both with a young man's trip to Ukraine to research his family's history in the Holocaust and with the story of a Jewish shtetl. The second portrays the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, through a nine-year-old boy's eyes.

Foer began his talk, held at Hillel, with a few stories about the intersection of his day-to-day life and writing.

He said that when he tried to prepare for a book-reading on a subway, things became awkward.

"If they saw me reading my own book, I would immediately be propelled to No. 1 on the list of losers in the universe," Foer said.

He said he solved the problem by removing the dust jacket.

Foer said that when he writes, he doesn't start with specific goals.

"So much of the process of writing is figuring out what I want to tell," he said.

In crafting characters, Foer said he relies on his own sense of what's authentic.

"You tell certain kinds of lies in order to tell other kinds of truths," he said.

The discussion eventually veered towards Foer's controversial decision to not only write about Sept. 11 but to include pictures in his novel depicting the tragedy as well.

Foer said he thought there was no such thing as writing about Sept. 11 in fiction "too soon." If his book did poorly, he said, "nobody's going to starve to death -- except for possibly my son," contrasting this with what he called the negative results of faulty journalism that surrounded the terrorist attacks and the leadup to the war in Iraq.

Students were also curious about Foer's reaction to the adaptation of his first novel into a 2005 film starring actor Elijah Wood.

The author likened this question to "asking a father if his daughter looks sexy on prom night."

Chuck Brutshe, the associate director of the Fox Leadership Program, estimated that 120 students attended Foer's lecture.

College freshman and Foer fan Allison Kupferberg skipped class to attend the event.

"Goddamn, it was worth it," she said.

The event was co-sponsored by the Fox Leadership Speakers Forum and the Social Planning and Events Committee Connaissance.

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