From Amazon.com
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.