A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
I finished Dave Eggers' book last night. I got last Friday and started reading it late Friday night.
For those of you who do not know, AHWOSG is a first person true narrative that was nominated for a pulitzer prize two years ago. It reads like a novel, and it feels like a novel, but it's mainly just a memoir.
There have been a lot of things said about the book by a lot of people. The New York Times book review raved about it, and the reviewer who wrote about it there is not known for giving raves. Some people scoffed at it, saying it was self-indulgant and too self-referrential. Others said that he was capitalizing on the misfortune of others. The book has sold phenominally well (aside from the fact that you can only get it at independent bookstores and, for some reason, Amazon). The movie rights have been sold, and I think that Nick Hornsby is writing the screenplay.
Anyhow, I was curious about it because I'd heard so much about it. I didn't know much about Eggers except that he was a writer, and that there was a lot of discussion about the book. The book starts off in the early 90s, when he's maybe 21 years old and it's the winter break in his last year of college. He's the third of four children, aged 23, 22, 21, and 7. His father died of some sort of cancer during the Thanksgiving holiday, and his mother is about to die of stomach cancer in a few days. His oldest sib, a brother, is living and working in DC, and his sister deferred law school for a year to be with his parents during the last days. So, when it comes down to making arrangements, he and his youngest brother move to Berkeley with his sister when she starts law school. Because of the stress of law school, two households are set up, and he becomes the primary parent for his brother. One of the main themes of the book is his struggle with being a parent and a brother and twentysomething goof off.
There are a lot of literary things that I could say about the work, how in some ways it reminds me of reality television (and the Real World plays a minor role in the book) and how forums like this one, where ordinarly people talk about their lives in a self-conscious, self-referential way, and hope and pray for readership. Hope and pray that our lives, and our talking about our lives is interesting enough for someone else to pick up and read and find as fascinating as we do. But for me, it's the relationship that I have personally with the experience that I think is fascinating. The first half of the book really had a particular draw for me, because he and I practically had the exact same flight path in moving to Berekeley. He started off in a sublet in the Berkeley Hills, and struggled to find a permanent home for the family. Eventually, he and his brother ended up in the flats, near Gilman Street. He talks a lot about living in Berkeley, naming specific streets, talking about the grocery stores that we shopped at, the kinds of people who live there. Also, most of the time that I lived in Berkeley, I lived with my youngest sister, and while we were much closer in age, and my responsibilities to her were not as great, I still felt the pull of being the older one, the one that had to look out to make sure she was ok, the one that people looked to when answers weren't coming from her. When I left Berkeley, the hardest part was leaving her, and I think that my relationship with her was amazingly strengthened by our time in Berkeley together. I found myself relating to the book in a fairly unique way, and I think that it probably colored the rest of the book for me.
The book itself, outside of the heartbreaking parts, is fairly difficult to pigeonhole. Like I said, it reads like a novel. It's laugh out loud funny, and at times it can be self-depreciating. I keep thinking that I'll have to read it again later on, when I am able to digest it further. The relationship that the author has with his brother is a wonderful one, and his relationships with the rest of the world are much more complex. It's hard to look in someone's life like this, to see them practically naked. To what extent he omits stuff, I do not know, but he does put very, very difficult things in there. At times when I realize that I'm reading a true to life account, I feel like I'm reading someone's private journal, that I shouldnt' have access to these thoughts. At other times, I understand that I'm taking only so much as he is willing to give, and that I have full permission to take from this. This feels much more real than watching someone's life on television for a month on a reality TV show, even though it may possibly be as artificial. There's something about the written word, and the talking to people physically on the other side of the written word that makes it easier to lay open your wounds for all the world to see. That the book is true to life makes it more interesting than a novel, even though one could change the names, and a few facts, and present the book as a novel.
Dave Eggers was the founder and editor of the now defunct Might magazine in the 90s, and today, he is the founder and editor of McSweeney's literary journal (the next issue will be edited by Michael Chabon, and will include works by Stephen King, Nick Hornby, Michael Crichton, Neil Gaiman, Elmore Leonard, Glen David Gold, Harlan Ellison, Dan Chaon, Dave Eggers, Sherman Alexie, Aimee Bender, Rick Moody, Jim Shepard, and others.) His first novel came out late last year, and I'm interested to see what it has to say.
______________
In other news, I may be playing matchmaker for a local filmmaker's mom tonight. A mutual friend mentioned that she's looking to hook up this woman with someone like my godfather, and he and I are having dinner tonight. I love the son's work, and I'm interested to meet the rest of the family.
For those of you who do not know, AHWOSG is a first person true narrative that was nominated for a pulitzer prize two years ago. It reads like a novel, and it feels like a novel, but it's mainly just a memoir.
There have been a lot of things said about the book by a lot of people. The New York Times book review raved about it, and the reviewer who wrote about it there is not known for giving raves. Some people scoffed at it, saying it was self-indulgant and too self-referrential. Others said that he was capitalizing on the misfortune of others. The book has sold phenominally well (aside from the fact that you can only get it at independent bookstores and, for some reason, Amazon). The movie rights have been sold, and I think that Nick Hornsby is writing the screenplay.
Anyhow, I was curious about it because I'd heard so much about it. I didn't know much about Eggers except that he was a writer, and that there was a lot of discussion about the book. The book starts off in the early 90s, when he's maybe 21 years old and it's the winter break in his last year of college. He's the third of four children, aged 23, 22, 21, and 7. His father died of some sort of cancer during the Thanksgiving holiday, and his mother is about to die of stomach cancer in a few days. His oldest sib, a brother, is living and working in DC, and his sister deferred law school for a year to be with his parents during the last days. So, when it comes down to making arrangements, he and his youngest brother move to Berkeley with his sister when she starts law school. Because of the stress of law school, two households are set up, and he becomes the primary parent for his brother. One of the main themes of the book is his struggle with being a parent and a brother and twentysomething goof off.
There are a lot of literary things that I could say about the work, how in some ways it reminds me of reality television (and the Real World plays a minor role in the book) and how forums like this one, where ordinarly people talk about their lives in a self-conscious, self-referential way, and hope and pray for readership. Hope and pray that our lives, and our talking about our lives is interesting enough for someone else to pick up and read and find as fascinating as we do. But for me, it's the relationship that I have personally with the experience that I think is fascinating. The first half of the book really had a particular draw for me, because he and I practically had the exact same flight path in moving to Berekeley. He started off in a sublet in the Berkeley Hills, and struggled to find a permanent home for the family. Eventually, he and his brother ended up in the flats, near Gilman Street. He talks a lot about living in Berkeley, naming specific streets, talking about the grocery stores that we shopped at, the kinds of people who live there. Also, most of the time that I lived in Berkeley, I lived with my youngest sister, and while we were much closer in age, and my responsibilities to her were not as great, I still felt the pull of being the older one, the one that had to look out to make sure she was ok, the one that people looked to when answers weren't coming from her. When I left Berkeley, the hardest part was leaving her, and I think that my relationship with her was amazingly strengthened by our time in Berkeley together. I found myself relating to the book in a fairly unique way, and I think that it probably colored the rest of the book for me.
The book itself, outside of the heartbreaking parts, is fairly difficult to pigeonhole. Like I said, it reads like a novel. It's laugh out loud funny, and at times it can be self-depreciating. I keep thinking that I'll have to read it again later on, when I am able to digest it further. The relationship that the author has with his brother is a wonderful one, and his relationships with the rest of the world are much more complex. It's hard to look in someone's life like this, to see them practically naked. To what extent he omits stuff, I do not know, but he does put very, very difficult things in there. At times when I realize that I'm reading a true to life account, I feel like I'm reading someone's private journal, that I shouldnt' have access to these thoughts. At other times, I understand that I'm taking only so much as he is willing to give, and that I have full permission to take from this. This feels much more real than watching someone's life on television for a month on a reality TV show, even though it may possibly be as artificial. There's something about the written word, and the talking to people physically on the other side of the written word that makes it easier to lay open your wounds for all the world to see. That the book is true to life makes it more interesting than a novel, even though one could change the names, and a few facts, and present the book as a novel.
Dave Eggers was the founder and editor of the now defunct Might magazine in the 90s, and today, he is the founder and editor of McSweeney's literary journal (the next issue will be edited by Michael Chabon, and will include works by Stephen King, Nick Hornby, Michael Crichton, Neil Gaiman, Elmore Leonard, Glen David Gold, Harlan Ellison, Dan Chaon, Dave Eggers, Sherman Alexie, Aimee Bender, Rick Moody, Jim Shepard, and others.) His first novel came out late last year, and I'm interested to see what it has to say.
______________
In other news, I may be playing matchmaker for a local filmmaker's mom tonight. A mutual friend mentioned that she's looking to hook up this woman with someone like my godfather, and he and I are having dinner tonight. I love the son's work, and I'm interested to meet the rest of the family.