Response to column appreciated

Envy can take on many forms and one of them is ignorance. But ignorance is not nearly as blissful as bringing one’s enemies closer – closer even than one’s friends (or in this case, peers.) Elyssa Pachico’s response to my latest column about Jonathan Safran Foer was warranted, expected, and appreciated, and the same goes for any of you who were less publicly offended by what I wrote. Foer was once an enemy of sorts, but after reading “Everything Is Illuminated” as repentance over the weekend, I concede the use of “envious” (rather than “jealous”) to describe some of my feelings toward the author, but not all of them. I am not withdrawing the majority of the comments in my article, but I comprehend the gravity of both the issues I was discussing and my failure to broach them from a more ethically sound vantage point.

I am a senior, I am an English major, and I am a representative of this newspaper, and speaking of the Holocaust and September 11th while overdosing on sarcasm was inappropriate, as was my protesting avoidance of Foer’s work. Bottom line: Foer is an accomplished writer, something I should have learned first-hand quite some time ago, but the issues I brought up are important ones. Assuming that it was unclear, or rightfully ignored, the first time, I’ll reiterate one of my realizations in Foer’s words, from “Everything Is Illuminated:” “The ‘what’ is not so important, but that we should remember. It is the act of remembering, the process of remembrance, the recognition of our past…” I maintain that Foer’s work should be respected as “acts of remembering,” but whether his work is art, or good art, is a matter of opinion. And yes, renconciling art and mammoth tragedies – discussing them in the same sentence – is delicate and difficult, but once we have seen the art with our own eyes, we should not be afraid to speak.