A conversation with the American novelist and essayist Jonathan Safran Foer
Of Francesca Merlo
“You think your pain and heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was Dostoevsky and Dickens who taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”
(James Baldwin for «Life Magazine», May 1963).
Jonathan Safran Foer, moments after meeting Leo XIV, paused under Bernini’s canopy in St. Peter’s Basilica, reflecting on the quiet intimacy that exists between a writer and a reader. «What literature does — and what James Baldwin described very well — is to remind us that the things we feel most deeply do not distance us from other people. They connect us with others,” he told Vatican media.
On June 24, the American writer and essayist had just joined dozens of authors from all over the world to celebrate the centenary of Lev. Gathered in the Vatican, they listened to Pope Leo’s reflections on the vocation of writers. In his speech, the pontiff described writing as an act of truth and humanity. And he reminded them that “the truth is not a territory to be defended, but a good to be shared” (Magnificent humanityn. 25).
“When I wrote my first book,” Foer recalls — the story of a young American Jew who travels to Ukraine to search for the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis — “I asked myself, ‘Who could possibly like this?’, imagining that it might appeal to a young Jewish man with experiences similar to those of the author and protagonist. But a lot of those people didn’t like it. As it turns out, many of the readers who felt most deeply connected to the novel had very little in common with it. Some of the most intense reactions I received were from people on the other side of the world, who read the translated book, who didn’t have the same religion as me, who didn’t belong to my generation, who didn’t speak my language. It might seem – he continues – that we had very few ways to communicate directly. But then art reminds us that for the things we feel most deeply all those differences don’t matter.”
Perhaps it is precisely the ability to overcome every cultural, linguistic and political boundary that gives literature its unique relationship with the truth. Foer admits this responsibility that those who write have.
Today the public debate seems to revolve around the defense of truths, although Foer suggests that the current challenge is no longer just a matter of disagreement. Speaking about his homeland, the United States, he says: «We have reached a point that is even worse. It is no longer a question of opposing truths, but of a reluctance to accept that there is such a thing as truth. There is no shared reality.”
He recognizes the beauty of each person having a belief and their reasons for believing it, but warns that we have reached a point where “we believe things without reason and without proof. They are simply our feelings, our instincts.” This – he observes – has been going on more or less as long as there have been social media; and our leaders, he adds, are not to blame for creating this reality. But they are guilty of allowing it, of bringing it into public and making it accepted. According to him, US political leaders have “weaponized the idea that there is no truth worth trusting.”
As for Foer, for him the issue goes beyond politics. It is reflected in humanity’s response to one of the crises to which Foer dedicated many of his writings. “There’s a reason why you and I are here sweating profusely,” he tells us. «It’s unusually hot. And it’s unusually hot everywhere.”
The oppressive heat is an unpleasant reminder that humanity already knows what is happening, and for Foer “why is no mystery. We definitely know why. We know that our choices as individuals, as communities, as countries, are creating climate change.”
However, there is a clear gap between what happens when we know the truth and how we react. We have learned that knowledge alone is not enough to change behavior and determine action. “Humans have the extraordinary ability to know something without truly feeling it in their hearts in a way that can inspire action.”
What is needed, he suggests, is not simply more information, but the kind of moral imagination that allows people to feel the suffering of others as their own, because even if we have recognized the problem, “I don’t think the solutions to our biggest problems will come naturally,” Foer explains. “They will come because we will find ways to remind ourselves that we must act.”
«Not everything you face can be changed, but nothing can be changed until you face it»
(James Baldwin, As much truth as one can bear«The New York Times», January 1962).
And this, he suggests, is one of the defining tasks of leadership. “There are no good leaders right now who talk, in a conversational and inspiring way, about many of our biggest problems,” he says. And, thinking back to the context that brought him here, he adds, this “is something that really distinguishes Pope Leo”.
The Pope’s recent encyclical on artificial intelligence, Magnificent humanityFoer continues, is “brilliant and important, but so frighteningly unique (…) because it talks about it in ways that other leaders should but aren’t.”
Foer sees artificial intelligence as another example of a challenge that cannot be solved with mere awareness. “If the only response to artificial intelligence is the action of individuals, it will not be a problem that will solve itself,” he says.
“It will be solved, if it is solved, because that knowledge will become action, and this will happen because we will be inspired.” The question of whether literature itself can inspire this action, however, somehow creates contrasts for Foer. “I don’t know if he can do it,” he admits. “One of the things about writing is that you actually write in the dark.” Rather than trying to convince readers about climate change or politics, he says, he simply writes about what matters most to him. It is there that, unexpectedly, literature reveals its strength.
Returning to the words of James Baldwin, Foer describes literature as something that goes beyond language, nationality or belief. «I hope that literature has the ability to touch people in that primitive place that comes before race, religion, language and nationality: that is probably the place that needs to be touched to awaken awareness of suffering in the world».
For him, this is not a reason in favor of novels about climate change or immigration. “It’s a reason to write in a way that makes people empathize.” Because empathy, according to him, rarely remains confined to a single cause.
«People who feel empathy are open to the world, they tend to feel a very broad empathy – he says -. My feeling is that there are open people and closed people… And art is an excellent tool to open people.”
«I often ask myself what I would do if there were no books in the world»
(James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room)
