Más sobre los jóvenes prodigio USA

Gabe Hudson y Jonathan Safran Foer acaban de ser considerados por la revista Granta como dos de los veintiún mejores novelistas jóvenes de Estados Unidos (el listón que separa la juventud de la madurez, por cierto ha descendido en esta ocasión de los 40 a los 35 años). El primero es un autor correcto, hasta la fecha excesiva, sino completamente, dependiente de su propia experiencia como carne de cañón durante la primera Guerra del Golfo (Estimado Sr. Bush, Emecé, 2003). El segundo enlaza con esa estirpe de autores judíos geniales y jugosos que hablaron de la universalidad a partir de pequeños personajes de las barras y estrellas más o menos cotidianas (Todo está iluminado, Lumen, 2003).

Hace dos años, el primero entrevistó al segundo a raíz de Tan fuerte, tan cerca, título que, en cuanto derivado de y protagonizado por los atentados del 11-S, de algún modo relacionaba sus intereses literarios. El medio fue el Village Voice, y de aquella charla me parece interesante rescatar estas dos declaraciones de Safran Foer, acerca de la función de la narrativa de ficción la primera y sobre la alargada sombra de Philip Roth la segunda…

“It troubles me when people ask if it's too early to make art pertaining to September 11. No one asked, in the moments after the attacks, if it was too early for Tom Brokaw to report it. Do we trust Tom Brokaw more than we trust, say, Philip Roth? His wisdom, his morality, his vision? I don't. I appreciate that Tom Brokaw and Philip Roth do entirely different things, both necessary. I wouldn't want Roth giving me my information about what happened on a given day in Baghdad, and I wouldn't want Brokaw giving me my information about what it felt like. Journalists traffic in biography. Artists traffic in empathy. We need both. So why do people continually question what's the appropriate terrain for art? Why do people wonder what's "OK" to make art about, as if creating art out of tragedy weren't an inherently good thing? Too many people are too suspicious of art. Too many people hate art.”

“If I weren't Jewish, or if Roth weren't Jewish, the comparison probably wouldn't be made. Then again, the thought of Roth not being Jewish doesn't make any sense. It's like a cucumber not being a vegetable. (Could I not be Jewish?) In any case, it's not only a generous comparison, it's wrong. I've written two books. What makes Roth Roth isn't any one book, but how he's changed over the course of his career, over the span of dozens of books. He's outlived every title applied to him—wunderkind, misogynist, genius, disappointment, Great Jewish Author, Great American Author, Great Perverted Author, and so on—and now he's just Roth. The Great Roth. Simply being oneself—being an original—is the most a writer can aspire to. And it's not something that happens after two books.”