You’re in your late 20’s or early 30’s. Now imagine the life you have with your partner summarized in tiny bursts of sentences from today to a point 30 or 40 years in the future. Got it? Can’t picture it? Well, if you can’t visualize that concept, don’t worry; instead, read “Here We Aren’t, So Quickly” by Jonathan Safran Foer.
The starts out in the first person for the first paragraph and then moves to the second person in the second paragraph. The you in the story being the narrator’s girlfriend/wife. After these first paragraphs the story then alternates voices or perspective every few sentences. At times, this switching becomes fatiguing, but in a story that is two pages long, it works. We watch as these people age, grow closer, and change. Throughout the process, their fears, anxieties and idiosyncrasies are laid out for the reader to peruse, like a yard sale of emotion.
What I like about this story is that it tries to do something new. Whether or not it’s successful is up to the reader. One thing I think about is does the story stay with me? “Here We Aren’t, So Quickly” may not fit into a neat category, but it stays with the reader long after closing the pages. For that reason, it’s a success.
Q&A with Jonathan Safran Foer.
More “20 Under 40.”
>hm.. they dont necessarily grow closer now do they? their relationship throughout their entire lives is pretty much dead and empty and they're happier when they're apart, than together.
>I don't see their relationship as dead and empty. Their relationship seems normal and complicated, it draws out their possible differences.What would a story be like from the woman's perspective? How much of what the narrator is saying true, and how much conjecture? Perhaps, they are close because they know so many intimate details about each other. Perhaps, aging is full of small sadness.
>I get a feeling that the last section of the story is to say, "We make choices that make us who we are,but if we had chosen otherwise…here we aren't." Does this make sense to anyone?
>I get the sense that she is dead at the end of the story. He also mentions that "You were too light to arm the airbag." or something like that early on in the story.
>It probably would have been more apt to call this piece a cameo and I think distinguishing it as such would save many from the anticipation of elements of dialogue, rising action, etc. one comes to expect from a "story." Nonetheless I feel like this is a wonderful piece of writing that captures so many of the paradoxical elements of life. The sentences come off as both momentary jogs of thought spit down quickly in a journal as well as musings of an old man reflecting on a relationship with a hindsight bias prescription. I love how it clothes the banal terror of the realization that we've become who we didn't think we'd become/didn't want to become/didn't plan on becoming that comes in and out of our lives in various stages both consciously and unconsciously.