Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

biographical index!” “Your what?” “I started it when I was just beginning to write! I'd create a card for everyone I thought I might need to reference one day! There's a card for everyone I ever wrote about! And cards for people I talked to in the course of writing my pieces! And cards for people I read books about! And cards for people in the footnotes of those books! In the mornings, when I'd read the papers, I would make cards for everyone that seemed biographically significant! I still do it!” “Why don't you just use the Internet?” “I don't have a computer!” That made me start to feel dizzy.
    “How many cards do you have?” “I've never counted! There must be tens of thousands by this point! Maybe hundreds of thousands!” “What do you write on them?” “I write the name of the person and a one-word biography!” “Just one word?” “Everyone gets boiled down to one word!” “And that's helpful?” “It's hugely helpful! I read an article about Latin American currencies this morning! It referred to the work of someone named Manuel Escobar! So I came and looked up Escobar! Sure enough, he was in here! Manuel Escobar: unionist!” “But he's also probably a husband, or dad, or Beatles fan, or jogger, or who knows what else.” “Sure! You could write a book about Manuel Escobar! And that would leave things out, too! You could write ten books! You could never stop writing!”
    He slid out drawers from the cabinet and pulled cards from the drawers, one after another.
    "Henry Kissinger: war!
    "Ornette Coleman: music!
    "Che Guevara: war!
    "Jeff Bezos: money!
    "Philip Guston: art!
    “Mahatma Gandhi: war!”
    “But he was a pacifist,” I said.
    "Right! War!
    "Arthur Ashe: tennis!
    "Tom Cruise: money!
    "Elie Wiesel: war!
    "Arnold Schwarzenegger: war!
    "Martha Stewart: money!
    "Rem Koolhaas: architecture!
    "Ariel Sharon: war!
    "Mick Jagger: money!
    "Yasir Arafat: war!
    "Susan Sontag: thought!
    "Wolfgang Puck: money!
    “Pope John Paul II: war!”
    I asked if he had a card for Stephen Hawking.
    “Of course!” he said, and slid out a drawer, and pulled out a card.
    “Do you have a card for yourself?”
    He slid out a drawer.
    “So do you have a card for my dad?” “Thomas Schell, right!” “Right.” He went to the'S drawer and pulled it halfway out. His fingers ran through the cards like the fingers of someone much younger than 103. “Sorry! Nothing!” “Could you double-check?” His fingers ran through the cards again. He shook his head. “Sorry!” “Well, what if a card is filed in the wrong place?” “Then we've got a problem!” “Could it be?” “It happens occasionally! Marilyn Monroe was lost in the index for more than a decade! I kept checking under Norma Jean Baker, thinking I was smart, but completely forgetting that she was born Norma Jean Mortenson!” “Who's Norma Jean Mortenson?” “Marilyn Monroe!” “Who's Marilyn Monroe?” “Sex!”
    “Do you have a card for Mohammed Atta?” “Atta! That one rings a bell! Lemme see!” He opened the A drawer. I told him, “Mohammed is the most common name on earth.” He pulled out a card and said, “Bingo!”
    I sat down on the floor. He asked what was wrong. “It's just that why would you have one for him and not one for my dad?” “What do you mean!” “It isn't fair.” “What isn't fair!” “My dad was good. Mohammed Atta was evil.” “So!” “So my dad deserves to be in there.” “What makes you think it's good to be in here!” “Because it means you're biographically significant.” “And why is that good!” “I want to be significant.” “Nine out of ten significant people have to do with money or war!”
    But still, it gave me heavy, heavy boots. Dad wasn't a Great Man, not like Winston Churchill, whoever he was. Dad was just someone who ran a family jewelry business. Just an ordinary dad. But I wished so much, then, that he had been Great. I wished he'd been famous, famous like a movie star, which is what he deserved. I wished Mr. Black had written about him, and risked his life to tell the world about him, and had reminders of him around his apartment.
    I started thinking: if Dad were boiled down to one word, what would that word be? Jeweler? Atheist? Is copyeditor one word?
    “You're looking for something!” Mr. Black asked. “This key used to belong to my dad,” I said, pulling it out from under my shirt again, “and I want to know what it opens.” He shrugged his