Technology and communication (or lack... â€� Jonathan Safran Foer Q&A

Cynthia Shannon asked Jonathan Safran Foer:

Technology and communication (or lack thereof) plays a big role in your book HERE I AM. Do you think we're able to express ourselves better or worse in the age of Snapchat and emoticons?

Jonathan Safran Foer We express ourselves differently. Sometimes it feels better, or at least easier. Sometimes it feels worse, or at least shallower. You're probably asking the wrong person, though, as I don't use Snapchat or emoticons. Technology is used in the book not in order to comment on expression, but as a means for characters to be "elsewhere." Jacob conducts a fantasy life through his phone, but also by browsing real estate ads on the Internet and imagining lives he knows he'll never live. Sam, his eldest son, spends much of his free time in the virtual world of "Other Life." And Jacob's father, Irv, is a kind of xenophobic lawn sprinkler, shooting off his every opinionâ€”and some opinions he probably doesn't actually haveâ€”by means of his blog. In the cases of those three generations of Bloch men, technology facilitates being somewhere other than in one's life.

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