Books: The Master of Illumination

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It is tempting at times to resist Foer's writing. There is a certain quirky cuteness to Oskar that can be cloying. When he trots out yet another amusing hobby or one of his many idiosyncratic verbal mannerisms--he pronounces acronyms like ESP phonetically; instead of saying something is great, he says it's "one hundred dollars"--you have to fight back the image of Jonathan Lipnicki, the kid from Jerry Maguire. But these doubts are pulverized by the book's devastating set pieces, which are of the kind only a genuine talent who knows exactly what he wants to say can pull off. Foer's rendition of the Allied bombing of Dresden, in a flashback involving Oskar's grandfather Thomas, has the punishing, visceral vividness of the battle scenes from The Red Badge of Courage. "Rapid, approaching explosions" sound "like an applauding audience running toward us." After the first wave of bombs, Thomas rushes out into the firestorm to find his girlfriend: "I grabbed the doorknob and it took the skin off my hand, I saw the muscles of my palm, red and pulsing, why did I grab it with my other hand?"

In those moments, Foer just might be as good as he's trying so hard to be. "That was the part where I felt the least self-consciousness," he says. "While I was writing it, I really felt like I had all these incredibly deep feelings and I was pushing them out the end of my pencil. This is what I want my writing to feel like to me."

Looking at this earnest, fiercely determined, hugely ambitious writer, who at 28 already has two better-than-solid novels out and who is only getting better, you have to wonder what happened to the glittery, bow-tie-wearing little boy he used to be. "When I was younger, I wore it all on my sleeve," Foer says. "I think writing helped me change that because it was another way of showing myself." So, is mini-Liberace gone forever? Just for a micro-second, so that you almost miss it, the sober demeanor is gone, and Foer lets himself look a little bit mischievous: "You don't know what's under this sweater."