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way, for instance, notoriously did not include dialogue-tags in much of
his fiction. Foer takes this unattributed quoting to new heights. He employs
vast paragraphs of dialogue in which quotes are often not separated
by anything more than a period, and often do not have Alex’s narrative
interjections between them to give us clues as to who is saying what. Still,
because of Alex’s strange Ukrainian-American English his voice is unique
enough that it can usually be distinguished from Jonathan’s. Instances
where Alex’s voice is distinguishable or indistinguishable from Jonathan’s
can be found in any of Alex’s journey narrative chapters, such as one of
his earlier ones entitled “Going Forth to Lutsk.” Throughout most of this
chapter, if the reader pays close attention it is easy enough to distinguish
who is saying what, such as in this passage:
“Do you have motorcycles in America?” “Of course.” “And
fax machines?” “Everywhere.” “You have a fax machine?” “No
they’re very passé.” “What does it mean passé?” “They’re out-ofdate.
Paper is so tedious.” “Tedious?” “Tiresome.” “I understand
what you are telling me, and I harmonize. I would not ever use
paper. It makes me a sleeping person.” (Foer 71).
Alex is easily identified in the section as the speaker who asks, “Do you
have motorcycles in America?” and whose quotations occur every other
sentence afterwards. Obviously, we can discern that this is Alex because
he has never been to America, and that the other speaker is Jonathan, because
he is the American. In terms of voice, however, Alex’s voice is quite
distinctive because of his unique brand of American English. The phrase,
“I harmonize,” for instance, is not something that any American would
typically say. If it were Jonathan, he would have responded, “I agree.”
Also signifying that the first speaker is Alex is his questioning of the word
“tedious,” as he so often does when he does not understand a word or
phrase Jonathan utters.
“Going Forth to Lutsk” also contains examples of the confusion this
34 | Mehlinger
un-tagged, mashed-together way of writing dialogue can cause Jonathan’s
and Alex’s voices to become visually indistinguishable. It is relatively
simple to distinguish between Jonathan’s and Alex’s voices in the previous
section because the quoted text is only a small portion of a larger
paragraph. In this particular paragraph, as in others, there are no dialogue
tags except at the very beginning of the paragraph when Alex writes, “‘A
question,’ I said” (Foer 71). Similarly, in a large paragraph earlier in the
chapter, Alex includes only one dialogue tag at the beginning of the paragraph:
“‘I want to see Trachimbrod,’ the hero said” (59). Visually, looking
at this immense chunk of un-separated, untagged dialogue makes it difficult
to distinguish between who is speaking unless the reader pays close
attention. Speed-reading certainly would not work here. If one’s attention
is wandering, it would be easy to confuse which of the two characters is
speaking, because Alex’s voice parrots back much of what Jonathan says
to him, as in this small segment: “‘And the shtetls weren’t only Jews, so
there should be others to talk to.’ ‘The whats?’ ‘Shtetls. A shtetl is like a
village.’ ‘Why don’t you merely dub it a village?’ ‘It’s a Jewish word.’ ‘A
Jewish word?’ ‘Yiddish. Like schmuck.’ ‘What does it mean schmuck?’”
(60). Nearly every time Jonathan mentions a word, Alex repeats it, as
though he is experimenting to see how Jonathan’s foreign words work
but putting them in his own mouth. Alex repeats the words and phrases,
“Jewish word,” “village,” and “schmuck.” As our eye’s skim over the words
they run together, catching these repeated phrases. Without dialogue tags
to guide us in this sea of text, these large chunks of dialogue must be read
carefully in order to figure out who is speaking. Mingling Alex’s and Jonathan’s
voices together like this is another way Foer attempts to intertwine
the voices of these two character-narrators.
By creating a complex narrative structure in which Alex’s and Jonathan’s
voices affect and change one another, and in which Alex’s narrative
power seems to outweigh the supposed “hero” and creator of the book,
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