If I haven't laid out my good-book-philosophy yet, then I'll do it here. It needs to be done some time, or else any reviews I write would be somewhat out of context. So, here goes:

To me, there are two main parts, or aspects, of a book. One is the story, and the other is the way it is written. When I say "story", I mean everything that happens in the book, as it would happen in real life (or some other life, in sci-fi), while the "way it is written" is, of course, the words that are chosen to describe these things and happenings, and their particular relationship with each other.

It is my [strong] opinion that any really good book not be lacking at all in the writing category, because a story by itself is just a campfire tale or a Jerry Bruckheimer production. I have a collection of old Irish short stories, and the early ones are all like this; they were made to be told, by a trained storyteller, to groups of people on cold winter evenings. Yeah, you hear about some interesting people and interesting things happen to them, but they're stuck in some sort of one-dimensional, ambiguity-free world. So, if the writing's no good, even the best story in the world will only earn three stars (case in point: Da Vinci Code, not even to imply it has the best story in the world, but it does have a good one.

Tilting the scales the other way, all I remember from the first time I
read Catcher in the Rye was that Holden got kicked out of school [again] and subsequently went home to New York and wandered around for a while. That's hardly a story, in the classical sense. Can you imagine telling the story of Holden Caulfied to a cabinful of people on a chilly January night? I can, and all the people would be asleep, or maybe they'd be gone, having a nip or vodka at someone else's house before tucking in. What I'm trying to say is that, even though there is a story in Catcher in the Rye, it's not an incredibly strong one. And yet it's the greatest book ever written (that I've read). Not once in J.D. Salinger's masterpiece do I find myself wanting to know what happens next, contrary to Dan Brown's perpetual "where's the GRAIL?!?" and any of the generally despicable "crime" genre, "who done it?". Salinger always lives in the moment, telling you what is happening without building it up into some sort of Rocky vs. Drago scene. That's good writing; I want to read it, not skip ahead to know the ending. That brings me to another point: if knowing the ending "ruins" a book, the book has bad writing. Salinger dedicates CITR to the "casual reader", if he exists (in 1955, presumably), because he reads when he has time, for enjoyment, and not to get to the end of the book. I was disappointed the second time I read CITR, last year, because it didn't just keep going. Salinger is perfect for casual readers, because nearly every page can be seen as a contextless example of good writing.

But enough talking up of Salinger [, who's a genius]. My next example
is Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Very good writing. But the story gets in the way. It's a shame, because I'd like to hear more about what the kid (I have forgotten his name) has to say about a lot more stuff. JSF keeps hanging that "to what lock does this key belong" question in front of us. And some of the interstitial/backstory chapters are slightly off the mark and distracting, sometimes because those stories were too complicated and I couldn't keep all of the characters straight.

But what he did wrong in Extremely Loud, his second novel, he somehow managed to get, spot on, in his first, Everything is Illuminated. This book changed my entire perspective of novels, because I was starting to believe that a "good" (i.e. exciting, mysterious, goal-oriented) story cannot be paired with good writing without overshadowing it. Nope, JSF existed in some parallel dimension where this pairing is possible when he wrote Everything is Illuminated. The most powerful character by far is the Ukrainian guide (I forgot his name, too), and somewhere between his interactions with the "hero" (named Jonathan Safran Foer; I remembered that one), the letters he writes later, and the observations he makes on every aspect of the story, are nothing short of amazing. And then JSF includes, in between "main plot" chapters and the guide's letters, a wonderfully surreal (and surreality is perhaps the best quality of JSF's writing, that I have seen so far) historical recount dating back some 200+ years, of which I never tired of reading.

Two observations that earn this book five stars: I enjoyed reading the book immensely without wanting to skip ahead, and at the end of the book my jaw was hanging open and I wanted to cry [just a bit]. Writing: check. Story: check. Do the writing and story play nicely with each other?: check.

Five stars.

As a final note, and not to take away from the unbelieveable
awesomeness of Everything is Illuminated, but I don't feel like
reading it again. I'm not surprised, because Catcher in the Rye is the
only book I've ever read more than once, but I have to think about why
I don't want to read Everything is Illuminated again, other than
simply wanting to read other books instead. I want to read Salinger
(any of them) over and over again. Let's just say that in a
Salinger-less world, JSF would be on top, but here in this world, this
is not the case.

Everything is Illuminated is awesome. Read it.