A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
by Dave Eggers
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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 show more Work of Staggering Genius is an instant classic that will be read in paperback for decades to come. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
I loved this book, and deeply resented every time he revealed a bit of truth and the wires he'd been manipulating the reader with, and loved it some more. Best damn footnotes in the history of fiction.
…nel senso proprio di farci un buco nel mezzo, toglierne la parte centrale…
perché, cavolo! ..ce l’avevi quasi fatta, Dave! – ecco, sì.. mi riferisco proprio a te, visto che tu hai avuto la faccia tosta di riferirti direttamente a noi lettori, manco fossimo tuoi amici.. costretti per affetto a sorbirci i tuoi bla bla bla.. i tuoi attacchi di megalomania, le tue paranoie e i tuoi vaneggiamenti visionari – ce l’avevi quasi fatta, dico.
già da quella trovata delle note di copyright… hihihi, quando mai mi ricapiterà tra le mani un libro che pretende di esser letto già dalle note di copyright! :D
e quei suggerimenti poi! …wow, ti meriti un applauso! ..bel modo di tirarti fuori da ogni responsabilità! …”io ve l’avevo show more detto!”, giusto?!
ok, non c’è che dire, quel che di certo non ti manca.. o non manca al tuo libro, è l’autoconsapevolezza dei propri limiti.
ci sei riuscito veramente a scrivere un libro autoreferenziale, mica ci credevo: bravo!
però, te lo devo dire, forse forse non è vero che tutta la parte pre-libro merita di essere saltata.. anzi, è proprio in quella che mi son fatta la gran parte di risate, e dove tu cominci a farti conoscere per quell’egocentrico, logorroico, tenero simpaticone che sei.
per il resto… è vita.
e allora di che cavolo ti sto rimproverando? …in fondo, come dici, non sei stato tu a chiederlo, no!?
e no, decisamente non è necessario fare “finta che sia una finzione”, la vita è vita.. piuttosto diseguale e spesso poco interessante.
ma tu, lasciatelo dire (e non mandarmi affanculo):
sei proprio un bravo fratello! ^_^
p.s.: magari un giorno ci proverò davvero a leggere questo libro come una ciambella, saltando la parte centrale, dalla 203 alla 295, proprio come dici tu.. così, giusto per vedere com’è.
però non te lo prometto.
p.p.s.: ...e comunque è un 4---. show less
perché, cavolo! ..ce l’avevi quasi fatta, Dave! – ecco, sì.. mi riferisco proprio a te, visto che tu hai avuto la faccia tosta di riferirti direttamente a noi lettori, manco fossimo tuoi amici.. costretti per affetto a sorbirci i tuoi bla bla bla.. i tuoi attacchi di megalomania, le tue paranoie e i tuoi vaneggiamenti visionari – ce l’avevi quasi fatta, dico.
già da quella trovata delle note di copyright… hihihi, quando mai mi ricapiterà tra le mani un libro che pretende di esser letto già dalle note di copyright! :D
e quei suggerimenti poi! …wow, ti meriti un applauso! ..bel modo di tirarti fuori da ogni responsabilità! …”io ve l’avevo show more detto!”, giusto?!
ok, non c’è che dire, quel che di certo non ti manca.. o non manca al tuo libro, è l’autoconsapevolezza dei propri limiti.
ci sei riuscito veramente a scrivere un libro autoreferenziale, mica ci credevo: bravo!
però, te lo devo dire, forse forse non è vero che tutta la parte pre-libro merita di essere saltata.. anzi, è proprio in quella che mi son fatta la gran parte di risate, e dove tu cominci a farti conoscere per quell’egocentrico, logorroico, tenero simpaticone che sei.
per il resto… è vita.
e allora di che cavolo ti sto rimproverando? …in fondo, come dici, non sei stato tu a chiederlo, no!?
e no, decisamente non è necessario fare “finta che sia una finzione”, la vita è vita.. piuttosto diseguale e spesso poco interessante.
ma tu, lasciatelo dire (e non mandarmi affanculo):
sei proprio un bravo fratello! ^_^
p.s.: magari un giorno ci proverò davvero a leggere questo libro come una ciambella, saltando la parte centrale, dalla 203 alla 295, proprio come dici tu.. così, giusto per vedere com’è.
però non te lo prometto.
p.p.s.: ...e comunque è un 4---. show less
how to describe reading this? he tells this pretty heartbreaking story (not a surprise if you believed the title) in a way that really belies the emotion behind it. to me, that made it a bit of a weird read, to see how intentionally he avoided the underlying stuff, while talking about everything else, and alluding to the feelings but (almost) never getting to them, while at the same time so obviously only thinking about them. i'm interested in reading him again just to see what else he does, and how he'd write fiction, but i'm still not quite sure how i feel about this one.
A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENIUS is delightful. Dave Eggers has a writing style like I’ve never read before. What would otherwise be, for example, sad or serious, he lightens. My gosh, he even makes the copyright page enjoyable reading! And I'm glad I read a hardcover copy and could see the cover minus the dust jacket. Check it out if you can.
This is a memoir. Eggers explains that he wouldn’t really call A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENIUS a true story because he made up the dialog. And sometimes that dialog is obviously his invention, such as when a 9-year-old boy talks with the maturity of a 30-year-old man or when he begins with his MTV interview that turns into something else. I sometimes had to re-read to show more understand what he was doing.
Before the beginning of A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENIUS Eggers notes all the parts you can safely skip. But that made me want to read them all the more, and I didn’t skip anything. I admit, though, after 100 or so pages his style sometimes aggravated me, his constant repetition, so I did skim some paragraphs. Even though I could tell that those paragraphs represented his private thought processes, I sometimes found them disjointed and monotonous.
Most reviews of this book concentrate on only part of the story, he and his little brother. Yes, Eggers raises his much younger brother, Toph, after their parents died. And, of course, Toph is a big part of the story, occupying Eggers' thoughts most of the time.
But he also emphasizes all the energy he simultaneously expends on a startup magazine. Poor Eggers is always exhausted.
Also running throughout his story are his remembrances of his mother, beginning near her end. Yet he doesn't have much to say about his father, apparently an alcoholic.
Eggers' memoir has three main subjects, not just one. Probably most readers find his relationship with Toph to be the most touching. show less
This is a memoir. Eggers explains that he wouldn’t really call A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENIUS a true story because he made up the dialog. And sometimes that dialog is obviously his invention, such as when a 9-year-old boy talks with the maturity of a 30-year-old man or when he begins with his MTV interview that turns into something else. I sometimes had to re-read to show more understand what he was doing.
Before the beginning of A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENIUS Eggers notes all the parts you can safely skip. But that made me want to read them all the more, and I didn’t skip anything. I admit, though, after 100 or so pages his style sometimes aggravated me, his constant repetition, so I did skim some paragraphs. Even though I could tell that those paragraphs represented his private thought processes, I sometimes found them disjointed and monotonous.
Most reviews of this book concentrate on only part of the story, he and his little brother. Yes, Eggers raises his much younger brother, Toph, after their parents died. And, of course, Toph is a big part of the story, occupying Eggers' thoughts most of the time.
But he also emphasizes all the energy he simultaneously expends on a startup magazine. Poor Eggers is always exhausted.
Also running throughout his story are his remembrances of his mother, beginning near her end. Yet he doesn't have much to say about his father, apparently an alcoholic.
Eggers' memoir has three main subjects, not just one. Probably most readers find his relationship with Toph to be the most touching. show less
I loved parts of this book and hated others. The rendering of 20-something life in the 90s etc was all very authentic, and perhaps one reason I found the book a little tedious and annoying at times. And also brilliant and wonderful at other moments. The stream of consciousness style worked but was allowed to stream on too long. Bonus points for the Illinois and SF settings. So, some sections get 1 star, others 5, therefore averaged and rounded up to 3.
After having read Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgard´s aitobiographical series "Min kamp", it was interesting (to say the least) to read Eggers´ autobiography. His approach is a bit more cautious than Knausgard´s; he admits to have changed names, and the book is closer to a book of fiction than the Min Kamp series. Also, Eggers bases his story on one particular part of his life: the loss of both his parents and his raising of his younger brother. It is nevertheless a tour-de-force of a book. Although the author at times seems to be too smug for his own good, he comments on it and in a way involves the reader into the reasoning behind telling the story in the way and manner he does. Some of the segments of the book are really show more inventively written, like the casting interview with MTV, others are incredibly strong and touching, like the sequence about his receiving his mother´s ashes. I wish I had left all the prefaces to the very end, these made more sensing reading after I had finished the main part of the book. I recommend this book to anyone who will be looking for an easy read that will challenge you all the way, and who enjoys authors that pour themselves into their storytelling. show less
An achingly hip, smugly knowing and oddly cheery version of a misery memoir. Eggers freely admits that the book is rambling, uneven and filled to overflowing with post-modern fanciness, and he's right. Still, if you're pulled in by the title, as I was, then you'll enjoy the author's style; if not, there's no point cracking the spine.
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ThingScore 79
''A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius'' is a book of finite jest, which is why it succeeds so brilliantly. Eggers's most powerful prose is often his most straightforward, relying on old-fashioned truth telling for its punch.
added by Shortride
Dave Eggers's new book, ''A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,'' is part autobiography, part postmodern collage, a novelistic ''memoir-y kind of thing'' that tells the sad, awful, tragic story of how the author's mother and father died within weeks of each other and how he became a surrogate parent to his 8-year-old brother, and tells it with such style and hyperventilated, show more self-conscious energy, such coy, Lettermanesque shtick and such genuine, heartfelt emotion, that the story is at once funny, tender, annoying and, yes, heartbreaking -- an epic, in the end, not of woe, though there's plenty of that too, but an epic about family and how families fracture and fragment and somehow, through all the tumult and upset, manage to endure. show less
added by Shortride
Though the book is marred by its ending--an unsuccessful parody of teenage rage against the cruel world--it will still delight admirers of structural experimentation and Gen-Xers alike.
added by Shortride
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Author Information
168+ Works 73,352 Members
Dave Eggers was born on March 12th, 1970, in Boston, Massachusetts. His family moved to Lake Forest, Illinois when he was a child. Eggers attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, until his parents' deaths in 1991 and 1992. The loss left him responsible for his eight-year-old brother and later became the inspiration for his highly show more acclaimed memoir "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius". Published in 2000, the memoir was nominated for a nonfiction Pulitzer the following year. Eggers edits the popular "The Best American Nonrequired Reading" published annually. In 1998, he founded the independent publishing house, McSweeney's which publishes a variety of magazines and literary journals. Eggers has also opened several nonprofit writing centers for high school students across the United States. Eggers has written several novels and his title, A Hologram for the King, was a finalist for the 2012 National Book Award. His most recent work of fiction, entitled The Circle, was published in 2013. His recent nonfiction books are The Monk of Mokha (January 2018) and What Can a Citizen Do? (Illustrated by Shawn Harris)(September 2018). (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Awards and Honors
Awards
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Notable Lists
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
- Original title
- A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
- Alternate titles
- A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: A Memoir Based on a True Story
- Original publication date
- 2000
- People/Characters
- Dave Eggers; Christopher "Toph" Eggers; Beth Eggers; Judd Winick
- Important places
- San Francisco, California, USA; Berkeley, California, USA
- Epigraph
- First of all: I am tired. I am true of heart! And also: You are tired. You are true of heart!
- 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.
- First words
- Through the small tall bathroom window the December yard is gray and scratchy, the trees calligraphic.
- Quotations
- We feel that to reveal embarrassing or private things, we have given someone something, that, like a primitive person fearing that a photograph will steal his soul, we identify our secrets, our past and their blotches, with o... (show all)ur identity, that revealing habits or losses or deeds somehow makes one less of oneself.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Oh do it, do it, you motherfuckers, do it do it you fuckers finally, finally, finally.
- Blurbers
- Wallace, David Foster; Sedaris, David
- Original language
- English
- Canonical DDC/MDS
- 973.92092
- Canonical LCC
- CT275.E37
- Disambiguation notice
- Please distinguish this Dave Egger's orignal published Work, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000), from its later reprint, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and Mistakes We Knew We Were Making... (show all)> (2001). As the Work titles suggest, the reprint includes an additional piece, "Mistakes We Knew We Were Making," that's not included in the original publication.
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- ISBNs
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- 16