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A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius By Dave Eggers ( Vintage )
Release Date: 2001-02-13
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Product Description
The literary sensation of the year, a book that redefines both family and narrative for the twenty-first century. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is the moving memoir of a college senior who, in the space of five weeks, loses both of his parents to cancer and inherits his eight-year-old brother. Here is an exhilarating debut that manages to be simultaneously hilarious and wildly inventive as well as a deeply heartfelt story of the love that holds a family together.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is an instant classic that will be read in paperback for decades to come. The Vintage edition includes a new appendix by the author.
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Amazon.com Review
Dave Eggers is a terrifically talented writer; don't hold his cleverness against him. What to make of a book called A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: Based on a True Story? For starters, there's a good bit of staggering genius before you even get to the true story, including a preface, a list of "Rules and Suggestions for Enjoyment of This Book," and a 20-page acknowledgements section complete with special mail-in offer, flow chart of the book's themes, and a lovely pen-and-ink drawing of a stapler (helpfully labeled "Here is a drawing of a stapler:"). But on to the true story. At the age of 22, Eggers became both an orphan and a "single mother" when his parents died within five months of one another of unrelated cancers. In the ensuing sibling division of labor, Dave is appointed unofficial guardian of his 8-year-old brother, Christopher. The two live together in semi-squalor, decaying food and sports equipment scattered about, while Eggers worries obsessively about child-welfare authorities, molesting babysitters, and his own health. His child-rearing strategy swings between making his brother's upbringing manically fun and performing bizarre developmental experiments on him. (Case in point: his idea of suitable bedtime reading is John Hersey's Hiroshima.) The book is also, perhaps less successfully, about being young and hip and out to conquer the world (in an ironic, media-savvy, Gen-X way, naturally). In the early '90s, Eggers was one of the founders of the very funny Might Magazine, and he spends a fair amount of time here on Might, the hipster culture of San Francisco's South Park, and his own efforts to get on to MTV's Real World. This sort of thing doesn't age very well--but then, Eggers knows that. There's no criticism you can come up with that he hasn't put into A.H.W.O.S.G. already. "The book thereafter is kind of uneven," he tells us regarding the contents after page 109, and while that's true, it's still uneven in a way that is funny and heartfelt and interesting. All this self-consciousness could have become unbearably arch. It's a testament to Eggers's skill as a writer--and to the heartbreaking particulars of his story--that it doesn't. Currently the editor of the footnote-and-marginalia-intensive journal McSweeney's (the last issue featured an entire story by David Foster Wallace printed tinily on its spine), Eggers comes from the most media-saturated generation in history--so much so that he can't feel an emotion without the sense that it's already been felt for him. What may seem like postmodern noodling is really just Eggers writing about pain in the only honest way available to him. Oddly enough, the effect is one of complete sincerity, and--especially in its concluding pages--this memoir as metafiction is affecting beyond all rational explanation. --Mary Park
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 I really liked it until I didn't...
I admit it. I enjoyed half of this book. The first half. Somewhere along the line, however, Dave Eggers starts sounding a little less bipolar and funny and a lot more whiny and childish. I stopped reading it. That's how bad it is. The first couple hundred pages are okay if not a little self indulgent. Look at me! I'm cool. I knew people from "The Real World." San Francisco... Woo Hoo. It's a bit much, but it's entertaining. That is until it just isn't anymore. His story is completely demolished by his delivery and the fact that his story, however sad or unfortunate, isn't all that special or unique or even interesting. Maybe if he didn't whine his way through chapter after chapter. Whoa is me. We get it Dave. The title is tongue in cheek, but you shouldn't name your book "genius" unless it's half way good and your book is only a third good if that. I'm heartbroken that I invested so much time in a book that I shelved without finishing. Read "What Is The What?" instead. Dave Eggers can write. No doubt. This just isn't his best work.
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Easily the worst book I've read all year
This is hands down the worst book I've read all year, and I read at least five a month. Thank goodness someone lent it to me and I didn't have to spend money for it. I kept feeling as if the author were trying to manipulate my emotions and not doing such a good job. Reading your immature teenager's diary would probably generate the same feelings.
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Heartbreaking? Not Really. Staggering? Sure. Genius? No Way! MTV GENERATION HYPE! ( rizzity_rizzob )
Listen, Dave Eggers is a real nice guy. He makes sure you understand that, above all else, by the end of his autobiography. I mean, after nursing his dying mother, he goes & raises his baby brother. A real nice guy. Unfortunately, nice guys don't write good novels. All the greats, & especially my favorites (Miller, Dosty, Camus, Bukowski) were pricks. You have to be a prick to be able to cut through the BS & madness that obscures the truth about life. Eggers story is a sad one, but tragic? Not really. Unique? Nope. Genius? No.
The funniest section is the prolonged introduction which you could read then toss the book in the fireplace & come away w/ all the best parts. I remember an article once in the SF Chronicle that had a drawing of the `Literary Universe' w/ Eggers in the middle. If Literary History has taught us anything, it's that men write better than women & that early success ruins a writer. (See Eggers' latest works.) At the time, w/ all the hype surrounding this book, especially in the Bay Area, critics claimed Eggers novel was the model for a future generation of young novelists. Well, that didn't happen. 9/11 came along & changed the public's literary taste along w/ everything else.
W/ all his name-dropping & goofy misplaced pop culture references, one can't really take this book seriously. I mean, as a work of Art. Autobiography? Fine. I would have waited 30 or 40 yrs to write mine, but he needed the money (or Fame), I guess. Anyways, I don't want to read a book written by some guy pouting because MTV's `Real World' turned him down. I wanna read a book by the guy w/ enough sense & good taste to prefer castration to going on MTV!
While attempting to show off his bravery & willingness to expose himself completely, Eggers doesn't really reveal all that much; there just isn't that much there to reveal. He's a normal nice polite guy, same as millions of others guys out there; exactly the same. That's the problem: he's too normal, he hasn't done or achieved anything extraordinary, thus, you're reading the rather dull story of a ordinary guy going through life which leaves the curious-minded reader wondering why he's wasting his time when he cold be reading the autobiography of, say, Miles Davis or Groucho Marx or Gandhi or Winston Churchill. 'Huh? I like never heard of those guys? Are they like rappers or uh what cuz like totally they're NOT on MTV!'
I can imagine the pitch meeting: `Well, uh, the plot is a lot like the TV show "Party of 5" but I just raise like one kid, my brother. But I admit in the book that I masturbate! Yeah, like everyday, in the shower! Oh & my good friend, Vince Vaughn, is in there w/ a lot of other celebrities I'm like really good friends w/ & stuff. Did I say my mom died of cancer? Isn't that like good for an advance or something?'
Name-dropping is utterly gauche; anybody w/ a sense of dignity knows this but Eggers' endless name-dropping, instead of appearing as an ironical satire of etiquette, seems rather a genuine ploy to impress the teeny-bopper MTV-driven 30-somethings who make up the majority of his audience. This is my general objection to the book. Eggers' attempts to convince the reader that the poses are poses, that the self-revealing confessions are acts of bravery, proving he doesn't care about what people think of him, is a front. He is not the alienated literary genius ruthlessly deconstructing the people around him, like, say, Kerouac or Capote, but rather, a member of the same sick 30-something, TV-raised, fame-obsessed, half-educated culture he claims to be above & apart from. In the end, the book is a joke, & Eggers himself, the man, is the punchline. One would have to laugh if it weren't for the fact that these people are the reason why the majority of Europeans think Americans are idiots. This book just gives them more fodder to throw back at us.
It reminds me of these `teen model' TV shows. You know the ones, where they indiscriminately reward or humiliate teenage girls looking to profit from their dubious beauty. Judged by `experts' w/ no reputable credentials whatsoever, these girls shamelessly pursue fame (their `dream') to be worshipped for their physical attractiveness or marketability or whatever it is. These shows are beamed to all corners of the world (from France to Dubai to Singapore to Tanzania & all points in-between) & foreigners watch them & think to themselves how shallow, ignorant, spoiled, desperate, shameless we are. We call this BS `Reality TV' & not just dummy teens watch these shows but adults too. Why? Because, sort of like `Wheel of Fortune' by feeding us the lowest, dumbest, most confused of us, we believe, or pretend o believe, that we have less to live up to. We forget about: Miles Davis, Kerouac, Lincoln, Thoreau, Salk, Douglass, Tubman . . . Our lives aren't so empty, so worthless, so meaningless when compared w/ a bunch of twittering girls weeping over insults from critics w/ no qualifications. Same w/ Eggers: if this guy's life is so important, noteworthy, unique that it can be written down & actually read by people, a lot of people, well then, whose life cannot? Who knows? Perhaps this is where Nietzsche's infamous sledgehammer should come in.
It is quite obvious to anyone who has been overseas lately that `We the People' are the joke of the world & it's our own fault. It isn't Bush, or the war in Iraq, or American imperialism or military spending or any of the other scapegoats the PC hippie New Leftists point at. `We the People' reward superficiality w/ our attention. We hold appearance above reality, beauty over brains, sex & money over fulfillment, popularity over decorum, hype over wisdom, shortcuts over patience - it's no wonder the world hates us. Paris Hilton: `OMG! She's like SO HOT! Like so hip! Totally like perfect, you know?' Miles Davis: `Huh? Who's that?' Proust: `Never heard of it. Isn't it like a city in Europe or something?'
Eggers? Please, man, joke's over, the money died! Nobody reads anymore because there's nothing to read; we haven't got any good writers left. America is laughed at by the rest of the world, spat upon, mocked, patronized. Whose fault is it? YOURS. Read smart books. Boycott idiotic TV shows. Stop buying into the PC New-Leftist program. Don't believe everything you think because you know what: `Everything you think is wrong.' - Rimbaud.
Rizzob
Rizzob
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The Mature Artist... ( jtschell )
I've heard it said that the mature artist does not bring attention to his work. Also, it has been said that an intelligent artist not break the rules merely to break the rules, but does so only to underline or add an exclamation point to his art.
There are flashes of brilliance in this, and in his other works. However those flashes are far too infrequent and the writing just too sophomoric for this book to be notable to anyone who cares about literature beyond it's capacity for mindless, self-aggrandizing entertainment.
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 A dizzying book ( khyams )
There is an image at the beginning of this book, of two brothers driving along Highway 1. They are flying on the edge of the world, going too fast, with only the guardrail between them and the ocean below, and they feel dizzy and free and reckless. It's an image that captures part of the soul of the book. There is another part of the book, that I think more of as the body, where there are two boys living together, one boy older than the other and trying to be the parent. He feeds the younger boy peanut butter and doesn't know anything about laundry, and wishes he could get laid more.
And the thing that makes this book live up to its audacious title is that the older boy goes about the whole thing, the project or experiment or act of shepherding his brother safely into adulthood, with complete intensity and seriousness. He does it while he is raising himself with equal intensity, building his own life.
It is outrageous to have written a memoir when you were in your mid-20's, more outrageous still to have been absolutely right to have done so.
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Addiction
