A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

Summary

This book is based on a true story. The author (who is 22 at the time) begins by describing his parents’ deaths from different types of cancer. His parents die within months of each other. His father dies unexpectedly while his mother dies a slow and horrible death, which the author certainly doesn‘t candy coat, he goes as far as to describe the tub of blood and mucous his mother has to spit into. After the death of his parents, the author is given custody of his eight year old brother and he moves with him to San Francisco. He gets a job working on a magazine, spends as much time as he can with his little brother, and has an occasional romantic interlude. Throughout all this, Eggers continually questions his motives and we are privy to his internal dialogues (e.g. his guilt and paranoia about not being able to be the parent he should be). The book opens up with a humorous page on ’Rules and Suggestions for Enjoying this Book‘, followed by a lengthy but equally humorous preface which also includes a page on how much he was paid for writing this memoir. This book was a Pulitzer prize finalist.

Discussion

-The majority of our book club hated this book, so much so that only two of us finished it (mostly out of a sense of obligation). This was primarily due to the main character, the author. He was described as narcissistic, arrogant, self indulgent, self obsessed, angry, and an unlikable character whose circumstances did not change him for the better.

-The writing was original - it was as if you were reading directly from someone’s conscious, as if we were listening to Eggers’ most private thoughts - such as his desperate need to find humor in the most dire of circumstances to internal bursts of cursing at slow drivers (something we can all relate to).

-Eggers is self obsessed…he thinks he is cool because he knew people from the show, “The Real World.” (And who would find the need to use the word ‘anemone’ twice in one memoir.)

-An amusing section of the book was about Eggers’ faking child star Adam Rich’s death in order to promote his magazine.

-The MTV interview which lasted about 100 pages could easily be skipped, the author tells the reader to do so in the preface of the book. Eggers never takes himself seriously.

-This is a heartbreaking story with many reviewers claiming that it is also a work of genius (due to the originality of the ’voice’ the author employs).