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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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
THROUGH THE SMALL TALL BATHROOM WINDOW the December yard is gray and scratchy, the trees calligraphic. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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5.0 out of 5 stars
As the Title Implies,
By "bryan77a" (Cary, NC United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (Paperback)
Dave Eggers has put out a truly great work of art here. The story is very touching as Eggers does a wonderful job of bringing the reader right into the novel with vivid descriptions. At times the novel is profoundly sad. Contrastingly, it is hilarious. Honestly one of the funniest books I have ever read.Listen, there are many great works of literature in the world, with their themes, symbols, and so on. This has that, but it is also incredibly fun to read. So do it.
3.0 out of 5 stars
a writer with a genius for self promotion,
By Patricia Pelletier (Quebec , Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius: A Memoir Based on a True Story (Hardcover)
You've got to give Dave Eggers this, if nothing else, he knows how to market himself. First he wrote this memoir, loaded with irony to appeal to Gen-Xers, continually self-referential to appeal to postmodernists, and centered around his efforts to raise his little brother after their parents both died of cancer, a sure chick magnet. Then, having exposed most of his and his family members' lives to public view (at least in theory) he adopted a Pynchonesque/Sallingeresque reclusive pose, and feigned personal agony at having to discuss the book. All this while cashing in big time on the supposedly "tragic" events of his life. For these savvy ploys alone he deserves to be called a "staggering genius." The book itself uses a host of postmodernist, ironical, satirical, self-conscious, etc., etc., etc...techniques, which are rather hackneyed and, given the ostensible topic of the book (his family tragedy), quite off-putting. At the point where every thought, emotion, and action in your life must be considered for how it will appear in print, you've become a fictional character rather than a real human being. And by creating so much distance between the character of Dave Eggers and the supposedly tragic events of his life, Eggers (the author) makes it really hard for the reader to care much. I finished the book unstaggered and heart unbroken, but grudgingly forced to admit that the literary world has a potential new genius, a writer with a genius for self promotion
2.0 out of 5 stars
I Think He Meant Stuttering Genius,
By Walter E. Hall (Phoenix, AZ) - See all my reviews
This review is from: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (Paperback)
The brilliant title notwithstanding, novelized autobiographies require something more interesting than the death of parents (barely etched at that) to make it interesting. At 22, the author pretends to know more and feel more than other less sexy mortals. The narcissism of this exercise becomes tiresome rather quickly. If Eggers were truly funny, he could have salvaged something. But Eggers is earnest, unflaggingly earnest, ironically earnest. While irony is a useful self-deflation device, Egger's overuse of it is instructive. If you need to mock your own work to defang critics, your issue is approval, not world-weary hipness. Readers might be better steered in the direction of Frederick Exley, whose similar novel/memoir A Fan's Notes is immensely and mordantly entertaining. But then Exley was writing outside the shadow of youth, and the tragedy of his failed expectations rings heroically true. Eggers needs to live a life before he starts writing about one.
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