Roggen Brod

As I read this book I was transported back in time to the fall of 2001. I am back in my English Lit capstone course listening to the drabble being spewed forth by my fellow English majors as they proudly proclaim that they just finished the last sentence of the next great American Novel. I am forced to read Elizabeth’s borderline plagiarism in which she reworded some of my favorite passages from Shakespeare, Butler, Hawthorne, Bronte, Chaucer and Dickens, piecing them together to form 200 or so pages of what can only be coined as “crap”. So in true Elizabethan form, let me summarize Foer’s work:

“Multifarious in its Forced Construction, Extraordinary in its Regurgitated Story, and Irrelevant in 101 Diverse Ways… Written with Stanch Self-Absorption and Self-Importance.”

What is Love:
Lots of death, lots of violence, lots of bread, what’s not to love? Perhaps a better question would be what is love?

Don’t worry guys, I am not going mushy on you. There was a lot I did not like about this book (it took me 156 pages to get to a point where my reading was not forced). Most of my complaints/concerns/frustrations have already been expressed by others, so I will move on.

Love is clearly an issue for Mr. Foer. Perhaps he wasn’t loved as a child. Perhaps he loved and lost. Perhaps he tried to hard to write the new “it” novel. He uses every tired cliché, and a few new ones, to create forced dialogue in hopes of leading him to an understanding of what love is. While it appears that Mr. Foer feels that he solved the riddle through the self-sacrifice (suicide) of Grandfather, I am not confident that he got it right. In fact I am rather confident that he got it wrong. So where did Mr. Foer go wrong?

Sex:
A tired cliché. After reading Alex’s first few pages I closed the book. Being carnal? 270+ pages of listening to a 20 something go on about being carnal is not my bag, baby. Devoted to the group, and having little to do, I trekked on through the gratuitous sexual escapades of Brod’s line. As I approached the end of the book I began to wonder if perhaps all the sex had a point (lame as it may be) after all. Foer’s characters spend approximately half of the book having sex in a vain attempt to feel love. Brod is repeatedly beaten by a husband crazed by a saw blade because she wants to feel love. Safran (who I dubbed “Duce”) pleasured the village’s old and widowed while remaining as dead inside as his calcium deprived arm. Alex claims to have been carnal with many women, but as we learn his claims are only to make him appear “premium” to Little Igor. (Wow, dead arms, miniature hunchbacked grave robbing little brothers, oedipal references EVERYWHERE… it’s like reading every great work of literature in one book! Elizabeth, you may have a run for your money.) No one achieved love through sex. (I realize that some believe that love was achieved through the parent/child relationship, and since children are created through the act of sex, sex clearly led to love, but it is my position that love did not exist between parents and children). Sex is clearly not the answer.

Violence (aka passion):
Yet another tired cliché. “I hit you to remind you that I love you.” “I don’t care that you beat me because I know you love me.” “I am raping you in hopes that you will love me.” “I only pounded my dead grandfather’s face because I loved him.”

“I am temped in occasion to strike Brod, not because she does wrong, but because I love her so much.” Pg. 86.

I think Foer spends too much time watching the Lifetime Network. I hear that there is a movie based on this book. Let me guess the cast, Costas Mandylor as Father, Victoria Principal as Mother, a young Kellie Martin as Brod, Jim Thorburn as young Safran, Wilford Brimley as Grandfather. I don’t think I need to elaborate.

Roggen Brot:
Take out the sex, take out the violence, what are you left with? About 45 pages of broken English, bad puns, and one (1) creative, original line of thought – Roggen Brot. Roggen Brot, or black bread appears subtly throughout the book.

“What Jacob R Ate for Breakfast on the Morning of February 21,1877
Fried potatoes with onion. Two slices of black bread.” Pg. 205.

“He made a bed of crumpled newspaper in a deep baking pan and gently tucked it in the over, so that she wouldn’t be disturbed by the noise of the small falls outside. He left the over door open, and would sit for hours and watch her, as one might watch a loaf of bread rise.” Pg. 43.

Roggen Brot, also known as Roggen Brod, is Russian for black bread. As I read the next passage, I couldn’t help but think of the Jewish people, Manna, and the desert.

“I tried very hard to be a good person today, to do things as God would have wanted, had He existed. Thank you for the gifts of life and Brod.” Pg. 85.

Yankel was a lost man. He was wondering aimlessly through life, slowly dying until God provided him with the divine gift of Brod.

But why the references to black Brod? Perhaps it is because she and her line appear to be cursed to never understand love. They are destined to be empty, lost, wondering in the wilderness forever without hope of salvation. Or maybe it is simply because Roggen Brod is a common Russian dark rye bread, or maybe Mr. Foer thought it sounded “neat”. Whatever the reason, it caught my attention.

All in all, this one will not be going on the book self.