everything is illuminated;

"These are my ghosts, the spaces amid love."

The quote is worth the weight of the book, that at times is an absurdist rendition of a Jewish stetl attempting to prove that even the Holocaust can be postmodern and jaunty, and at times a tear-jerker, confused about where it's going and where it's been, similar to your lead characters Alex, Jonathan and Alex Sr. Even Sammy Davis Junior Junior, a deranged "officious seeing eye bitch" seems to be unsure of her footing in this novel about so many things and so many nothings...

Where does the law of coincidence end and the law of plausibility being? Is it at all likely that this man would meet another? I suppose in the end we can only argue that Foer does a good job making something out of the darkness that is history, and that does make for illumination, even if it feels like that illumination is, as Alex so aptly describes his friend, "a world removed."

I can't give it five stars because I know that feeling of emotional distance too well - it makes this book unfamiliar and daunting. As if there is a 614th type of sadness: the sadness of knowing that human beings can never truly know one another.

The last thing I've ever wanted from a story about illumination is to know the real truth, and so despite its insight and wisdom, it can't be made numero uno.

now revising "the gravedigger"
now writing "there's probably no god"
now reading labyrinths - jorge luis borges
now listening breakin' up - rilo kiley
i am at metrosphere office, tivoli 313e