Good, if not as great as I thought it might be considering that it is one of the biggest, most discussed books of the last 15 years. Dave Eggers shares with David Foster Wallace a tone that is arch and metafictional, but also earnest and emotional, which has come to be the house style of a generation of writers. Late Postmodernism with heart. I have to say that whilst I enjoy the works of this generation of writers, I always feel that there is something wanting and they aren't up to the standard of the preceding Mount Rushmore of writers. There is always great stuff in a book by Eggers, or Foster Wallace or Zadie Smith etc... but I feel like their obvious desire to have it all, to be sophisticated experimentalists and appeal to the heart, always leaves them falling between two stools and not quite achieving either aim. They don't have the radical formal innovation of Pynchon, Delillo, Barthelme, or the searing, visceral appeal to the gut and the heart that Roth or Kerouac have. I think that Franzen is actually the best writer of this group of peers as in The Corrections and Freedom he just decided to stop playing games, stop trying to be cool and just write like a straight forward realist in the style of Tolstoy and George Elliot. The formal experiments in this book do serve a purpose, in making it possible to discuss tragic and emotional issues without descending into maudlin, tearjerker, misery memoir territory. However, the formal innovations don't seem particularly new, necessary or exciting. The first time you read Virginia Woolf or Samuel Beckett or Georges Perec the formal experimentation is thrilling, opening up previously unconceived vistas of thought and possibility. Here it seems perfunctory. I don't know what it is, but I feel like this generation of writers are not moving fiction in new directions. I don't know if it's because they all grew up absolutely saturated in popular culture but in some ways their writing seems middle brow, too close to TV and magazines and the internet. It lacks that quality that great writing of the past had, where reading it exposed you to a certain something you weren't going to get anywhere else, a unique vision and voice that wasn't part of the general cacophony.

I remember reading this book in Biology 11 -- either reading it before class started, or having it out on my desk, or something -- and my teacher, who was this sort of delightfully insane man who was retiring at the end of that year and so knew he could get away with anything, and once spent twenty minutes at the start of class telling us about the ABBA cover band he'd been to see last night, and how the music of ABBA uplifted the soul, and so on -- seeing the title and telling me never to be broken-hearted, never to get discouraged. Fifteen was not a good age for me and I nearly dropped out of school that year; his class was one of the few I made it through, mostly because he was so forgiving and so badly wanted me to make it through that he fudged all sorts of things to help me pass. That's what I always remember first when I think of this book.

Second I usually remember that Jarrett lent it to me, and that reminds me of how fifteen was in some ways a very good age. You know how when you're a teenager, everything is INCREDIBLY DRAMATIC, which means that when your life sucks (which obviously it does, because you're a teenager) THE WORLD IS ENDING, but also that when you're happy or in love or have good times with good friends, those are the most happy moments you will ever have or the most desperately in love you will ever be, for the rest of your life? Yeah.

Later, I remember mentioning this book to my AP Lit teacher Ruby, and her response being something like, "yeah, I remember what it was like to be 24," and I suspect if I read it now I would think, yes, juvenile, and it wouldn't do the same thing for me as it did at the time. So it's probably a good thing I don't actually have a copy.

It starts off as quite an interesting and hurt contemplation on life when you get into your thirties and your parents get older and their bodies start to fail. However Eggers then decides to go on and on and on about his mundane life editing a magazine, and sleeping with various women, quite far beyond the point of casual interest. A good editor would have chopped the book in half and told him to take out all the crap. I think Eggers is a good writer, but he doesn't know when he is interesting and when he is dull.

Não é um texto de génio, mas por vezes parece, no essencial é uma obra que demonstra uma assombrosa autoconsciência social, emocional e literária. Eggers conhece muito bem o mundo da literatura, tão bem como conhece as relações sociais humanas, e aproveita-se disso para brincar e romancear o centro da sua narrativa autobiográfica tornando-a mais digestível, porque assenta na morte de ambos os pais de cancro, tendo ficado o autor com 21 anos e responsável pelo irmão mais novo, Toph de 8 anos. Existem vários momentos em que esquecemos que estamos a ler as memórias do autor, tal o distanciamento que ele consegue criar na análise que faz do que aconteceu, antes e depois, especialmente pela intensidade da autocrítica que parece impossível de ser dita por alguém sobre si e sobre os seus, e num tom de brincadeira. Sobre tudo isto existe ainda o facto de ser um livro de memórias de alguém com apenas 29 anos, o que diga-se poderá ter contribuído para essa capacidade de alheamento cómico.



Dito isto, percebe-se melhor o título. Eggers sabe que tem uma história poderosa em mãos, e que facilmente poderia sacar lágrimas de quem o lê, mas não era isso que queria e por isso deu o mote logo no título, gozando consigo mesmo. Cabe ao leitor aceitar o repto do autor, ou não. A escrita é muito boa, Eggers vem munido de grande bagagem literária, não raras vezes damos por nós a parar para avaliar o que foi dito, o modo como foi dito, o que é que aquilo diz sobre o autor, mas também sobre nós, os humanos. Por outro lado, também muitas outra vezes damos por nós a desesperar e a querer avançar na diagonal, porque Eggers resolve engrenar numa variação qualquer que pouco ou nada tem que ver com o enredo geral. Na verdade, o livro é demasiado grande (450), 2/3 teria sido suficiente.

Como nota final, Eggers contribui de algum modo para o atenuar da nossa visão dos problemas num tom pessimista e negro. Por mais mal que estejamos, existe sempre quem estará pior e tem de conseguir encontrar forma de lidar com tal. Ainda que Eggers se recuse a fazer o papel de condutor do leitor pela via do sofrimento, torna-se inevitável olhar para tal e considerar a relação de identificação que criamos com o autor. Sofrer é uma condição inevitável pela qual todos os seres humanos têm de passar, mas podemos optar por usar a nossa consciência desses sofrimento para o tornar menos penoso.

Before I picked up this book I had heard endless tales of how wonderfully smart and funny this book was, how terrific the writing was and how the originality would slap me in the face like a cool wind on a summer's day. They were wrong. I hated this book like The Cure hates happiness.

I understand writer's have their own style, and that is what, in and of itself, separates them from all the others. But, seriously, we learn paragraph breaks for a reason. It gives the mind's eye a break, a breather. Eggers, a rebel in his own mind, discards such mannerisms.

Aside from that debilitating hindrance, the book is THE example for egotism gone awry. Now, before you start, yes, I am aware that a memoir book is, essentially, an ego stroke. But the good writers, they have the ability to make you forget that it's merely self-indulgence, sweep you up in their lives...in their story. Rather than want to beg the author in so many ways as to warrant that 500 feet order to invite you over, Eggers is the kind of guy you would actually go out of your way to avoid.

I know everyone hates Eggers and calls him a douchebag but, two things:

I saw him do a reading a few years ago at the Lisner and he was sort of slowly thrusting his pelvic area at the podium as he read. Almost absentmindedly. In the same way that fellow dorkus Travis Morrison dances to impregnate the audience, he read to impregnate the audience. I can't help but find that endearing. Because I am a perv.

Oh, the book: Yeah. It really speaks to me. 'Cause I'm an orphan too. And I've felt the same nasty, selfish things he's felt. Like that the world owes me somehow, and that I am Special - then, of course, in the next breath, I hate myself and feel like a failure. Even if you can't relate to it like this, you'll find something to hold on to. It's just a very human - that's the best word I can think - book.

his dedication to 826 is quite commendable, however.

"I should punch you in the face."

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck. I was reading this book and around page 237 (or was it 327? fuck), I figured it out- he's talking to ME. He wrote this book for me. Dave Eggers looked into the future and saw that I would want to read a self-referential, self-satisfying memoir. He knew that I would be trying to figure stuff, being in my twenties and all, and while not dealing with the enormity of losing both parents and having to rear a young sibling, I would have my own shit to work through. He. fucking. knew. But why not just make it more obvious? Why not dedicate the book to me? Or send me a note, an email even:

"Hey Karina- I know we've never met but I know that this book could really help you out. Love, Dave"

Maybe "love" is too much.

"Sincerely, and wishing you the best, Dave"

Ok, even a modest "Sincerely" would have been adequate. But I think I know why he didn't do that. He wanted to mess with me. WANTED to. He wanted me have that revelation on my own. I would thank him, but honestly, I didn't like the book. No, I didn't HATE the book. If I had HATED the book, I would have given it one star, right? But for all the hype, it really was very frustrating. I even started skimming by the end. Hey, maybe you've even started skimming this review. That's ok. I understand. I just didn't need to hear any more of his selfish, whining, complaining, navel-gazing, cutseyness sometimes. It was too much. And by the end I was really kinda hating him. Which I think is something he would have been ok with, expecting even. It was too cute, too overdone, needed to be edited, cut in half. The stuff about his mother in the beginning was beautiful, because it felt sincere. ok, maybe that is his schtick- an insincere memoir, hiding behind a supposed stance of openness and sharing. well, screw that. That isn't why I read that kind of book. So bugger off Eggers and don't write any more books for me, ok?

A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius, the 2000 memoir by Dave Eggers, was recommended to me by a college student I've gotten to know at McClain's Coffeehouse. I spend my weekends there writing and wasting time on social media while this guy is studying French or wasting time playing poker. We use each other as a sounding board when we're writing. We both love to read; he can't believe I've never read William Faulkner or Philip Roth. I can't believe he's never read Elmore Leonard or Stephen King. We agree that John Steinbeck and Flannery O'Connor are our people.

I feel it's also relevant to mention that I'm forty-three and this guy is twenty-three. He's intelligent and could be a really good writer, but he's also twenty-three, and does shit that you do in your twenties, like disgrace yourself with alcohol or drugs, misplace valuable items and stress over things that you can't control. It occurs to me that I'm old enough to be this guy's dad and have motive and opportunity every now and then to give him a Father-Son Talk, but try not to. It might make me feel a little better but I'm not sure it would help him right now. If he asks for advice I'll offer it, but I don't want to father my friends.

The other thing I don't want to father is the books I read. Like this one. What are we going to do about Dave? I don't really know, but I resent an author who turns me into a guidance counselor or youth pastor on my day off.

In this imaginative account of his early life, Eggers was on track to earn a journalism degree until the deaths of his parents within the same year--his father from brain and lung cancer, his mother from stomach cancer--force him to take time for himself to Question Everything. Dave's hiatus is exacerbated by his eight-year-old brother Topher, who he assumes guardianship of while his sister Beth finishes her law degree at the University of Berkeley and his brother Bill works in Los Angeles. Dave and Toph relocate to the San Francisco Bay Area, where the tech boom is transforming the country and his generation.

Sounds like the basis for a compelling book. Except this edition begins with two pages of suggestions from Eggers on how to enjoy the book (including, "There is no overwhelming need to read the preface. Really. It exists mostly for the author .."), followed by a nine page preface, followed by twenty-five pages of acknowledgments which includes a sketch of a stapler.

EXT. MCCLAIN'S COFFEEHOUSE--DAY

Joe storms onto the patio of the cafe. The sunlight forces his eyelids into slits and the sound of industrial dryers of the car wash across Harbor Blvd. disorient him. Joe is able to locate Bryan under the canopy of the building, smoking a cigarette and studying. Joe stomps over to his friend with a book in his hand.

JOE: There's like thirty pages of preface and introductions to this book you recommended, man.

BRYAN: Oh, you don't need to read any of that.

JOE: You're telling me he wrote this book for himself?

BRYAN: You can skip it. Skip it! Eggers even tells the reader it's okay to. It's good, man! Trust me.

Bryan emits a plume of nicotine onto the patio. Joe turns and returns to the cafe.

I read a great deal of A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius, 270/437 pages, before abandoning this hooptedoodle. It is not for me. I am not the demographic for navel gazing, no matter how literary it aspires to be. If I was still questioning my place on the planet, or through controlled substances and poor decisions had forgotten what planet I was on, then sure, I could appreciate the self-obsessed shit storm Eggers unloads here, resisting the conventional memoir or comic narratives commonly found in them. I'm glad he got this out of his system and figured things out. It was worth it for McSweeney's. I just don't want to have to read it.

The fact that I plowed through as much of the book as I did is a testament to the hand drawn, DIY look and feel of it, more like pages ripped out of a spiral notebook rather than a memoir intended for the masses. I was with the book in the beginning. Eggers throws the reader into his experiences caring for his cancer-stricken mother at home, with limited help from his sister while also having responsibility for his young brother. It probably isn't a spoiler that after Dave's mother dies, he and Topher move to the Bay Area, where much ennui ensues. For many, many, many pages.

This book becomes an incessantly self-obsessed, irritating and boring account of White Man's Problems in the United States. I ran out of reasons to keep reading. No one who braves this volume should expect a comic memoir. Humor isn't really what Dave Eggers does. "Irony" and "self-revelation" are way ahead of "humor" on the list. There's a recurring motif where he devotes paragraphs to how amazingly talented he is at things--singing, Frisbee throwing--and I get it. You're a child trying to entertain the child you've been given responsibility for. Point made. I'm over it. Move on.

Eggers lost both his parents at a young age. Many people do. Eggers doesn't know what he wants to do with his life. Not many people do. Tell me a story. Let's go. Otherwise, as an adult, you're wasting my motherfucking time.

Después de un primer capítulo como el que nos da Dave Eggers en 'Una historia conmovedora, asombrosa y genial' supe que, viniera lo que viniera después, iba a querer con desesperación este libro, aunque después viniera la prosa más infumable que hubiera podido leer en mi vida. Porque el primer capítulo habla de mí, de nosotros. Es lo que había estado esperando leer toda mi vida (o como mínimo desde los 18 años). Nadie antes lo había contado bien. La diferencia es que Eggers es sincero. La diferencia es que Eggers me entiende. No se olvida de nada. Incluye la tristeza y el sentido del humor en su justa medida. La resignación y la rabia en su justa proporción. El alivio y la frustración en su justa combinación. Lo que cuenta no sólo es verdad. Es mi verdad. En este primer capítulo Eggers cuenta como su familia se desintegra cuando su madre y su padre mueren de cáncer con sólo unos tres meses de diferencia. Y leerlo fue reconfortante y doloroso a la vez. Y es así como tienen que ser los libros.

Luego viene la parte en que él, con sólo unos veinte años, se tiene que cuidar de su hermano, que aún es sólo un niño pequeño. Pero aún hay otra línea argumental, que es el auge y caída de una revista en la que Eggers participó, 'Might', que pretendía ser la voz de la Generación X. La obra no sigue una narrativa lineal, sino que más bien presenta una serie de escenas/personajes que sirven para dar una visión caleidoscópica. El tema de la muerte de los padres es un tema recurrente, que va apareciendo constantemente, pero sobre todo al final, de modo que acaba siendo una obra circular, que termina retomando el principio.

Se trata de un libro autobiográfico, pero no sabemos hasta qué punto es no-ficción y hasta qué punto es ficción. El mismo libro se dedica a analizar esta cuestión. Y es que es un libro altamente (auto)reflexivo, que constantemente, de forma directa, reflexiona sobre su naturaleza, cita sus temas principales, analiza el significado de sus metáforas y su simbolismo, e incluso reflexiona acerca de estas reflexiones. Lo mismo le pasa al protagonista: es alguien altamente autoreflexivo, que siempre se dedica a analizar y a dotar de significado incluso sus actos más triviales, y después, cómo no, reflexiona acerca de estas reflexiones, analiza por qué siempre tiene esta necesidad de analizarlo absolutamente todo.

Aunque el resto de capítulos no los quiera con desesperación como el primero, los sigo queriendo. Porque es una obra original en su forma, pero nunca deja de preocuparse por el fondo y nunca deja de ser sincera. Antes que nada el libro habla del vampirismo y el exhibicionismo que comporta la escritura. De la necesidad de compartir el dolor, pero a la vez la necesidad de que nos dejen solos con nuestro dolor. Del fatalismo que nos embarga cuando nos ha sucedido una desgracia: si nos ha pasado una vez, nos va a pasar más veces. De la hipocondría, del convencimiento que vamos a morir jóvenes. De vernos empujados a actuar como adultos antes de que nos sintamos preparados. De lo difícil que es combinar las obligaciones familiares con la libertad personal. De huidas hacia delante y autodestrucción. Del miedo que acarrea la responsabilidad (¿y si mi hermano se convierte en un psicópata por mi culpa?) De ser un niñato inmaduro pero creerse alguien extremamente original, irreverente, especial e incomprendido. De arrogancia y sentimiento de culpabilidad. Pero sobre todo habla de como la muerte y la desgracia siempre están a nuestro alrededor y no podemos hacer nada para impedirlas. Y lo mejor es que lo hace todo desde una distancia irónica, pero a la vez des de la sinceridad. Lo mejor es que es divertido, pero a la vez profundo.

Holy Sweet Jesus...

This book is not for everyone. It's messy, ambitious, and eclectic to say the least. But oh my lord did I fall in love with this book.

It follows the true story of how Dave Eggers raised his little brother Toph after the death of their parents. It's technically a memoir, but to simply categorize it as such would be a grave injustice. You would think this is a sad book that's gritty, grimy, and realistic in its depiction of Eggers' life.

Not at all.

This book positively bursts with joy. The prose is unsurpassed in energy. It certainly has many conventional scenes. But a lot of the time, the prose turns into some odd mix of stream-of-consciousness and slam poetry, which is exactly as spectacular as it sounds. Additionally, this is a very self-aware memoir. Dave Eggers toys with reality, facts, and fiction to create a book that realizes what it is doing and comments on it. As a result, we get some odd mix of memoir, fiction, poetry, and philosophical essay.

Beyond the fantastic writing, Dave Eggers is one of the most interesting "characters" in this. He is hilarious, self-effacing, and bursting with joy. But as the novel continues, we get more and more passages of vulnerability, showcasing an insecurity in contrast with his confident and bold writing. He renders himself so complexly human in a way that a simple memoir could not achieve.

If you hate this book, I totally get it. It's very divisive. But give it a try. You may just end up turning the pages with the same level of exuberance and enthusiasm as me.