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A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
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A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

by Dave Eggers

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rec'd by Kathy
  katiemertz | Nov 20, 2009 |
The most well written book in recent years. Memoir-ish in structure, full of all the emotions that make up living. ( )
  jwcooper3 | Nov 15, 2009 |
I really just want to punch this asshole and tell him to get a grip, blow his nose and move on. Everyone's story is sad, everyone dies eventually and that the more people you know, the more dead people you know...We are a lot alike. I'm going to go drink.... ( )
1 vote spywall | Nov 14, 2009 |
A creatively-written memoir of two brothers on the road. Full of humor and sensitivity. ( )
  checkadawson | Nov 2, 2009 |
The title is a tad misleading; it's not all that heartbreaking and the genius is not especially staggering. Still, I would be willing to classify this memoir as one of the foremost texts on the Generation X mentality. Eggers recounts his life from the sudden death of his parents through his first few years as guardian of his younger brother, living in San Francisco, and starting Might Magazine. The writing style is self-conscious, obsessive, neurotic, and prone to lengthy tangents. The naked honesty of it all draws you in, keeps you reading. I'm not sure the rambling style would work as well in fiction, but as a memoir it's quite engrossing. Definitely recommended, especially to those who came of age in the 1990s. ( )
  melydia | Oct 28, 2009 |
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Dedication
Change and contentment via together-rising boats; The reckless encouragement of blue sky research; A mountain for every little person; A flood for New York.
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Through the small tall bathroom window the December yard is gray and scratchy, the trees calligraphic.
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Wikipedia in English (2)

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

William (Bill) Eggers

Book description

Amazon.com (ISBN 0375725784, Paperback)

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

(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:18 -0400)

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