Setting: We are at Bristol at the Four Seasons in Boston, at a table in the center of the room so that although we can see through the floor-to-ceiling windows to the Public garden across the way, it wouldn't be accurate to say that the view is ours. The room is mostly quiet, it being a weekday around noon.

My interview subject and lunch partner exclaims when I take out my tape recorder:

Jonathan: Holy moly!

Alana: The nicer one crapped out on me, so.

Jonathan: It's like a boom box! No, that's cool, it's like, old school. (looking over menu) What are you thinking?

Alana: I'm leaning toward the grilled vegetable panino.

Jonathan: (peering at the menu offerings) Where's that? I eat stuff like that all the time,..

Alana: If it were suppertime I would get the lemon pappardelle pasta, but I'm not that hungry in the middle of the day.

Jonathan: Are you a vegetarian?

Alana: I am.

Jonathan: Me too.

Alana: I think I'm gonna have that, the lemon. that's what I'll have.

Jonathan: Good, you can tell me if it's any good.

Alana: Yeah.

Jonathan: Which is better for me? The Greek salad, undoubtedly, right?

Alana: I think so.

Jonathan: I wanna eat something that's good for me.

Alana: You shouldn't do that, you shouldn't waste your time on things that are good for you.

Jonathan: Well, yeah, it's not as if the pasta's gonna be so much better than the Greek salad. That's it, I'm gonna have the salad. (sets menu aside)

Alana: So, you've been interviewed a lot lately. Does it get tedious?

Jonathan: It can, yes; there are times when it's tedious. Tedious is when. I did a radio interview yesterday

Alana: ... I heard that.

Jonathan: ... and the guy was very aggressive , just weird.

Alana: That's one of the more local Boston programs, that's sort of his style

Jonathan: Pissed me off, but, no, generally speaking, talking about books is nice.

Alana: Good! You should enjoy your work.

Jonathan: Yeah, it feels like a continuation of my work, it doesn't feel like a departure

Alana: What drew you to writing in the first place? What made you want to be a writer?

Jonathan: Uh, I think I'm still figuring that out.

I know a lot of writers who when they were young would keep diaries and read under the covers at night after they were supposed to go to sleep, and I was just not like that at all. I never had dreams of becoming a writer, I didn't read until sort of the end of high school, and I definitely didn't write anything at all.

I think a couple of things drew me to it. One of those is that it was more and more clear that I wasn't going to be anything else.

Alana: (laughs)

Jonathan: You know? It's not that I had to be this , it's that I couldn't be anything else.

Waiter: Hello, how are you?

Jonathan: Hi.

Waiter: Can I get you all something to drink?

Jonathan: I think we can order actually

Waiter: Oh good.

Alana: Water would be fine for me?

Waiter: Water?

Alana: And, um, the vegetable panino sandwich?

Waiter: Great.

Jonathan: Can I get water and a Greek salad and do you have orange juice?

Waiter: Yeah

Jonathan: Great. Thank you.

Alana: Thank you.

Waiter: You're welcome.

Jonathan: Let's see, let's see. It's also that I started to look at books differently. I used to think that if I read Middlemarch and didn't like it, it was my fault, I just wasn't up to it, and I thought people read books to improve themselves.

Alana: ... right.

Jonathan: ... and that writers were something that existed up here (gesturing) and I existed down here.

I just started to feel differently, a change in thinking where I began to think it was possible that maybe books could fail me. You know, not just that I would fail books , but that maybe if I hadn't read the book I wanted to read, I should try to, I should think about that, I should take that seriously ... What would that book be like, could I possibly write the book I wanted to read?

I think I really fell in love with writing when I realized it's such an incredibly open form. It can be anything you want it to be, it really can, maybe more than any other art form. And there's no excuse for there not being the book that you want.

Alana: Makes sense. Do you find that that you're not as interested in sort of the great works of literature, the Middlemarch and Jude the Obscure books, and that you're more interested in things that are less literary? Or is that sort of an artificial divide?

Jonathan: No, in fact my favorite books really are classics, as it turns out- The Odyssey , Ovid's Metamorphoses , Kafka, Shakespeare, you know, those are my favorite books. I don't mean to say that all the books that came before weren't for me, because so many of them really were. Like reading Kafka, I felt: 'God, this guy is somehow managing to say all of these things that I've felt and thought that isolated me from everybody else but in fact, whoa, they connected me to others? So that's not the case.

I do really love the visual arts. I love music. I draw as much as I wrote. Those inspire me to work as much as writing does, and as the books I read do.

Alana: That was one of the things that interested me about Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close , which I really enjoyed.

Jonathan: Thank you.

Alana: I know that a lot of people ask you about this, the fact that you played with the typesetting, and how you involved pictures and all. One of the things you said on that radio interview I thought was interesting was that it was like an airplane for a traveler, just the means for you to get to the end that you.

(waiter brings drinks)

Jonathan: Thank you.

Alana: So: to what extent do you think that your writing or any writing is a means to an end, and to what extent is it the art in itself, sort of the way visual art is?

Jonathan: People think about writing in such different ways, you know; the more I learn about the writing world the more I appreciate that.

There are people who think writing serves no purpose except to entertain, and sometimes they actually are good writers, you know? And I know writers who think writing is only about self-expression and sometimes they're great writers; and sometimes writers think writing is only about language, and they're great writers. So in a way it's not worth putting too much emphasis on what anybody thinks.

I'm not-as I said on that show-in love with writing as its own act. I'm really in love with what writing can do , and with the ways writing can help me say certain things I want to say and share things with people.

I really want to share. I like the idea of writing that is read , that it's part of a conversation or facilitates a conversation. You know, every good book I've ever loved, I always feel like I just shared something with the author,

The other day someone e-mailed me this really great anecdote, where a woman took her daughter to see a Georgia O'Keefe retrospective at the Met. The daughter was five years old and she stood in front of one of the paintings for a really long time and the mother was thinking, this is interesting, I'm surprised she's attracted to this painting! The girl steps back, and steps forward to get closer, keeps on looking at it, and she turns to her mom and says: I have to meet this person.

That's a response I've had from so many books I've read or paintings I've seen, like I just want to meet the person I feel like I've made a connection with. Even though people are almost inevitably disappointed when they meet the person who made what they love, I still think it's a great instinct.

Alana: Your topic for this book was very recent, and remains painfully fresh for a lot of people. Do you feel like you have a responsibility to the people who are going to read what you've written to represent it a certain way? Or generally, do you feel that as a writer you're responsible to the person who's going to read what you've written?

Jonathan: Not particularly. I think like my ideal reader wouldn't want a writer to think that way. Like, take a writer like Salman Rushdie, right-I wouldn't want him to try to write to my expectations because then what's the best thing he could do? Fulfill my expectations. Which sucks ... You know, that would be so disappointing. Ideally he would exceed my expectations, surprise me.

The whole notion, even thinking about it too much, is a failure in the making. Not only because you can't please people, but because even if you did, you would be disappointed. It's so much better to open yourself up to instinct, trusting that something good will come of that.

Alana: One of the things in the novel that I really liked was Oskar's father at one point says, in this didactic way, that "nothing is true and beautiful," if I remember rightly.

Jonathan: Yeah, or his mom alludes to the fact that he had said that.

Alana: Yes, so, do you believe that, first of all?

Jonathan: (speaking to himself) Do I believe that? (aloud) Is it funny that I've never actually wondered it about myself? No, I don't believe it. I mean, my brother just had this kid-that's a very true and beautiful thing. Parenthood seems to me-at least new parenthood-true and beautiful.

Alana: What about terms of artwork? Where you're trying to create truth and beauty with the tools of craft, but it's artifice. Is there a moment where you have to sacrifice one to the other?

Jonathan: Yeah. Yeah I think, often there is. Not necessarily , but you know there's a difference between something being realistic and something being believable.

One thing that's upset me is a couple of reviewers have written that something in the book isn't realistic. I think, of course it's not realistic! I didn't intend for it all to be realistic. It's not that realism has nothing to do with novels. If I tape recorded a nine-year-old and transcribed what he said then it would be unassailably realistic but I'm not sure it would make an interesting character. (phone chimes) Someone keeps calling.

Alana: Sure.

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