Something open and oxygenated, an expansive social activity: Jonathan Safran Foer

Jonathan Safran Foer is about to publish his new, post-9/11 novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and the Times magazine does some sniffery-pokery: "His office occupies a small rented room within walking distance of his home. The place is furnished sparsely, with little besides a long work table, a set of Ikea bookshelves and an oversize canvas dog bed reserved for a female creature named George, apparently a Great Dane mix. A curious object—a carpenter's hacksaw —hangs on an otherwise blank wall above the desk. (''You never know when you'll have a bad day,'' Foer explained.) ... Oddly enough, the room lacks a telephone, a detail that might lead you to envisage the author hunkered down in silent, undisturbed concentration. But the image is a total sham. Foer, as I later learned, didn't compose his new novel in this office... A kind of poet-wanderer, he does his writing all over town: in public libraries, in coffee shops and even in the homes of friends. The process of writing has traditionally been romanticized... as an act of self-imposed isolation, but Foer redefines it as something more open and oxygenated, an expansive social activity best undertaken amid the clamor of life. Of course, all of this prompts the question of why he needs an office in the first place. ''I need an office,'' he explained, a bit enigmatically, ''so I can have a place where I don't write.''