LLUVIA Y OTRO LIBRO

• John Irving, The World According to Garp, New York, Ballantine, 1976 (esta edición 1990) (título en castellano El mundo según Garp, editado por Tusquets).

BEAUTIFUL AND TRUE

In bed that night I invented a special drain that would be underneath every pillow in New York, and would connect to the reservoir. Whenever people cried themselves to sleep, the tears would all go to the same place, and in the morning the weatherman could report if the water level of the Reservoir of Tears had gone up or down, and you could know if New York was in heavy boots. And when something really terrible happened -like a nuclear bomb, or at least a biological weapons attack- an extremely loud siren would go off, telling everyone to get to Central Park to put sandbags around the reservoir.

Desde que empecé a leer el libro hasta el final, sentí un nudo en el estómago. No, no ahí exactamente ni tampoco un nudo. Sentí algo que no puedo explicar bien: ternura, tristeza, compasión, miedo, empatía. Pensé en la valentía de quien se había animado.

[...] so I invented a device that would detect when a bird is incredible close to a building, and that would trigger and extremely loud birdcall from another skyscraper, and they'd be drawn to that.

Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

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Para mi propio registro:

JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER emerged as one of the most original writers of his generation with his best-selling debut novel, Everything Is Illuminated. Now, with humor, tenderness, and awe, he confronts the traumas of our recent history. What he discovers is solace in that most human quality, imagination.

Meet Oskar Schell, an inventor, Francophile, tambourine player, Shakespearean actor, jeweler, and pacifist. He is nine years old. And he is on an urgent, secret search through the five boroughs of New York. His mission is to find the lock that fits a mysterious key belonging to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11.

An inspired innocent, Oskar is alternately endearing, exasperating, and hilarious as he careens from Central Park to Coney Island to Harlem on his search. Along the way he is always dreaming up inventions to keep those he loves safe from harm. What about a birdseed shirt to let you fly away? What if you could actually hear everyone's heartbeat? His goal is hopeful, but the past speaks a loud warning in stories of those who've lost loved ones before. As Oskar roams New York, he encounters a motley assortment of humanity who are all survivors in their own way. He befriends a 103 year old war reporter, a tour guide who never leaves the Empire State Building, and lovers enraptured or scorned. Ultimately, Oskar ends his journey where it began, at his father's grave. But now he is accompanied by the silent stranger who has been renting the spare room of his grandmother's apartment. They are there to dig up his father's empty coffin.

From the Houghton Mifflin Company edition