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At The Morning News, Robert Birnbaum catches up with w nderkind literary recluse Jonathan Safran Foer in the first extensive JSF interview we've seen since at least Saturday. In the course of 15,000-odd words, the duo embark on an increasingly bizarre meditation on the future of the written word. It begins:

RB: Well, say something.
JSF: Say something that isn t responding?
RB: Here s your chance. Otherwise, I m just going to ask you the same tedious questions that everyone has asked you ad nauseam.
JSF: I doubt that s true. I need a starting point.
RB: All right. Have you listened to any good music lately?
JSF: Bright Eyes.

It gets better. Join us, won't you, after the jump, for a tour into the future of fiction?

Chipper analysis of literary bestsellerdom...

JSF: They say [Stephen Hawking s] Brief History of Time is the most owned book that is never read. [both laugh]
RB: Ever see Herb Ritts s photo of Stephen Hawking?
JSF: Maybe I have and I don t know it was Ritts.
RB: It is a dead-on, tight head shot. It is oddly fascinating. Why did I bring that up? I don t know.

... segues to considerations of what technology could do to reading...

RB: If the books could talk.
JSF: Thank God they can t...
RB: Do you have any interest in creating more tactile kinds of features in your books to go along with the very visual? Or may be including one of those chips that if you press a certain part of the cover emits a sound or a quote?
JSF: I haven t...

Um, uh...

RB: I have taken to listening to the audio versions of books I have just read. I am listening to Sean Penn s reading of Dylan s Chronicles. It s a hoot.
JSF: I can imagine.

Losing... toehold... on... reality...

RB: In future editions of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, would you include the notes that accompany the press kit about what went into writing the book as perhaps an appendix?
JSF: I don t know what you are referring to.
RB: There is
JSF: Oh, like the author questionnaire or something like that.
RB: The thing where you talk about writing 2,500 pages to get to around 300 pages the self-interview. Would you include that in future editions?
JSF: No, never.

(Take that, Davey!)

And then, like it began, it ends:

RB: Right. How do you have a bookstore without a dog?
JSF: Right. [chuckles]

In the interests of fair use, there's much gold we missed. Do read the whole thing.
Birnbaum v. Jonathan Safran Foer [The Morning News]