Excerpt of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
(Page 1 of 8)
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What The?
What about a teakettle? What if the
spout opened and closed when the
steam came out, so it would become a
mouth, and it could whistle pretty
melodies, or do Shakespeare, or just
crack up with me? I could invent a
teakettle that reads in Dad's voice, so
I could fall asleep, or maybe a set of
kettles that sings the chorus of "Yellow
Submarine," which is a song by the
Beatles, who I love, because entomology
is one of my raisons d'être, which
is a French expression that I know.
Another good thing is that I could train
my anus to talk when I farted. If I
wanted to be extremely hilarious, I'd
train it
to say, "Wasn't me!" every time I made an incredibly bad fart. And if I ever
made an incredibly bad fart in the Hall of Mirrors, which is in Versailles,
which is outside of Paris, which is in France, obviously, my anus would say, "Ce n'étais pas moi!"
What about little microphones? What if
everyone swallowed them,
and they played the sounds of our hearts
through little speakers, which could
be in the pouches of our overalls? When
you skateboarded down the street at
night you could hear everyone's
heartbeat, and they could hear yours,
sort of
like sonar. One weird thing is, I wonder
if everyone's hearts would start to
beat at the same time, like how women
who live together have their
menstrual periods at the same time,
which I know about, but don't really
want to know about. That would be so
weird, except that the place in the
hospital where babies are born would
sound like a crystal chandelier in a
houseboat, because the babies wouldn't
have had time to match up their
heartbeats yet. And at the finish line
at the end of the New York City
Marathon it would sound like war.
And also, there are so many times when
you need to make a
quick escape, but humans don't have
their own wings, or not yet, anyway, so
what about a birdseed shirt?
Anyway.
My first jujitsu class was three and a
half months ago. Self-defense was something that I was
extremely curious about, for obvious
reasons, and Mom thought it would be
good for me to have a physical activity
besides tambourining, so my first
jujitsu class was three and a half months
ago. There were fourteen kids in the
class, and we all had on neat white
robes. We practiced bowing, and then we
were all sitting down Native
American style, and then Sensei Mark
asked me to go over to him. "Kick my privates," he told me. That made me feel
self-conscious. "Excusez-moi?" I
told him. He spread his legs and told
me, "I want you to kick my privates as
hard as you can." He put his hands at
his sides, and took a breath in, and
closed his eyes, and that's how I knew
that actually he meant
business. "Jose," I told him, and inside
I was thinking, What the? He told
me, "Go on, guy. Destroy my privates." "Destroy your privates?" With his
eyes still closed he cracked up a lot
and said, "You couldn't destroy my
privates if you tried. That's what's
going on here. This is a demonstration of
the well-trained body's ability to
absorb a direct blow. Now destroy my
privates." I told him, "I'm a pacifist,"
and since most people my age don't
know what that means, I turned around
and told the others, "I don't think it's
right to destroy people's privates. Ever." Sensei Mark said, "Can I ask you
something?" I turned back around and told him, " 'Can I ask you something?'
is asking me something." He said, "Do you have dreams of becoming a
jujitsu master?" "No," I told him, even
though I don't have dreams of running
the family jewelry business anymore. He
said, "Do you want to know how a jujitsu student becomes a jujitsu master?" "I want to know everything," I
told
him, but that isn't true anymore either.
He told me, "A jujitsu student
becomes a jujitsu master by destroying
his master's privates." I told
him, "That's fascinating." My last
jujitsu class was three and a half months
ago.
From Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,
pages 1-15. Copyright © 2005 by Jonathan Safran
Foer. Reprinted by permission of
Houghton Mifflin Company.
