A Heartbreaking Work

Paying respects to a previous post, here's something on Dave Eggers's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.

The book's story is great, the style and self-conscious self-consciousness is a lot much. In it, the rawness, excitement, fear and tragedy of youth paired with the supernova, lightning-in-the-sky devastation of losing both parents at 22-ish, becoming pseudo-parent to your 7-year-old brother (7 right?), makes for a rainbow, heartbreaking work.

Some snippets:

The ending:

What the fuck does it take to show you motherfuckers, what does it fucking take what do you want how much do you want because I am willing and I'll stand before you and I'll raise my arms and give you my chest and throat and wait, and I've been so old for so long, for you, for you, I want it fast and right through me--- Oh do it, do it, you motherfuckers, do it do it you fuckers finally, finally, finally.

In the last chapter, leaving it all in life and going to the volcano:

And we will be ready, at the end of every day will be ready, will not say no to anything, will try to stay awake while everyone is sleeping, will not sleep, will make the shoes with the elves, will breathe deeply all the time, breathe in all the air full of glass and nails and blood, will breath it and drink it, so rich, so when it comes we will not be angry, will be content, tired enough to go, gratefully, will shake hands with everyone, bye, bye, and then pack a bag, some snacks, and go to the volcano-- (433).

Nobody likes a critic, and Dave, if you end up reading this (for some crazy reason), this is out of admiration and love.

So on to your style, Dave:

There's real desperation in the book. I almost understand how/why it was a Pulitzer Prize finalist; its soul is strong. But many things about it seem like simply a polished journal, no doubt a polished journal of life flaming bright, burning, desolate.

The unsettling, irritating thing about the book is your perspective, exposed all too clearly in the preface, acknowledgments, and cloying appendix (Mistakes We Knew We Were Making). There's a lack of discipline and mystery, not that a work needs that, but why throw up everything that's in your head, heart? Because it works, I guess. The book is charming and probably couldn't be written in another style, but I got the sense that you're looking down on us, a pitiful, unenlightened, uninteresting audience; it's a haughty, an all-knowing stance from a so-special rubied perch in Berkeley, Brooklyn, Icelandic clouds. It's a lack of respect - can't we just be adults and assume the best? And you spent so much time justifying why it is the way it is (I guess you knew it was off, and basically said so a dozen times in various places in different ways in the book) - a little sloppy, a little careless. But that's youth isn't it?

This is your head explaining all its thoughts and its thoughts about those thoughts and its thoughts about those thoughts. Though, the way you weave death, rebirth, desperation and joy together is beautiful; it's not the words, it's the overt, clearly raw struggle that converged on you (your character?) in the story.

In your over-sharing, you give some rules for enjoying the book, which are actually accurate for approaching the hodge-podge that is the edition I read; in point 5, for example, you suggest the reader just read up to page 123, which after examining, I would completely agree with. The next 300 pages was a journal, an impassioned, somewhat-organized letter: "I'm still amazed that I finished it [the book] in the first place, and am also surprised when I see some passages, because, frankly, there are sentences I wrote and never reread; there are pages I never looked at again" (Mistakes We Knew We Were Making 8). AND IT READS THAT WAY.

"When I was done, I was ashamed, because I had written what I saw as a much too revealing and maudlin thing" (M.W.K.W.W.M. 35).

"but even so you wrote a book that was really a letter to them, a messy fucking letter that you could barely keep a grip on, but a letter you meant, and a letter you meant, and a letter you sometimes wish you had not mailed, but a letter you are happy that made it from you to them," (M.W.K.W.W.M. 35). You protect yourself by pre-empting, circumnavigating the impressions we can have from your work. I guess you have to protect your exposed heart, but it feels you at once exposed it, and then at the same time, tempered that exposure by couching it in a protected framework and then berate us for not appreciating what you did and how hard it was. I understand, it just feels like a little bit of a cheap, disingenuous way to go. Then again, what is this critic doing? Good luck and happiness. Till we meet. Adios.