This week, Jonathan Safran Foer, the author of Everything Is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, comes to UMass, where the students of the Commonwealth College have all been studying Extremely Loud. Foer has received both over-the-top praise—”after [Everything is Illuminated] things will never be the same again,” said The Times—and over-the-top insult: New York Press’ Harry Siegel called him “a fraud and a hack.” No matter what you think of Foer’s writing, the wake of controversy it leaves ought to provide plenty of literary sparring after he speaks in Amherst.
Sept. 23, 7 p.m., Fine Arts Center Concert Hall, UMass-Amherst.
jheflin@valleyadvocate.com
