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3.58 AVERAGE
3.58 AVERAGE
Хотелось бы как-то пошутить, но не получается. Роман слишком уж серьезный, хоть и скатывается местами в какую-то ситуативную гиперболизированную комедию.
Главный герой переживает смерть родителей, воспитывает младшего брата, вроде как даже взрослеет, но старше не становится, все продолжает подшучивать над братом, играть с ним, развлекает как может. И очень переживает, когда приходится оставлять его с нянькой или под чьим-то присмотром. Наверное, отношения с братом и есть главная линия романа. Присутствуют, конечно же, и другие линии - и журнал, который у всех уже в печенках сидит, и родители и их смерть, и родные старшие брат и сестра, и друзья какие-никакие, отношения с противоположным полом, например. Но это все как будто фон, это не имеет особого значения. Главное тут - младший брат, все ради него.
ЗЫ: может показаться, что местами проскакивает сатира, но автор нас уверяет, что в его романе НЕТ НИКАКОЙ САТИРЫ НИКОГДА НЕ БЫЛО И НИКОГДА НЕ БУДЕТ И НЕ ВЫДУМЫВАЙТЕ ЕРУНДЫ ВООБЩЕ
Главный герой переживает смерть родителей, воспитывает младшего брата, вроде как даже взрослеет, но старше не становится, все продолжает подшучивать над братом, играть с ним, развлекает как может. И очень переживает, когда приходится оставлять его с нянькой или под чьим-то присмотром. Наверное, отношения с братом и есть главная линия романа. Присутствуют, конечно же, и другие линии - и журнал, который у всех уже в печенках сидит, и родители и их смерть, и родные старшие брат и сестра, и друзья какие-никакие, отношения с противоположным полом, например. Но это все как будто фон, это не имеет особого значения. Главное тут - младший брат, все ради него.
ЗЫ: может показаться, что местами проскакивает сатира, но автор нас уверяет, что в его романе НЕТ НИКАКОЙ САТИРЫ НИКОГДА НЕ БЫЛО И НИКОГДА НЕ БУДЕТ И НЕ ВЫДУМЫВАЙТЕ ЕРУНДЫ ВООБЩЕ
if nobody got me i know dave egger's got me. perfect emotional support reread at work this summer.
"We cannot be stopped from looking with pity upon all the world's sorry inhabitants, they unblessed by our charms, unchallenged by our trials, unscarred and thus weak, gelatinous." (50)
"So why are you here?"
"I want you to share my suffering."
"You don't seem to be suffering."
"I don't?"
"You seem happy."
"Well, sure. But not always. Sometimes it's hard. Yeah. Sometimes it's so hard. I mean, you can't always suffer. It's hard to suffer all the time. But I suffer enough. I suffer sometimes." (209)
"What would a brain do if not these sorts of exercises? I have no idea how people function without near-constant internal chaos. I'd lose my mind." (214)
"I was born of both stability and chaos. I have seen nothing and everything. I am twenty-four but feel ten thousand years old. I am emboldened by youth, unfettered and hopeful, though inextricably tied to the past and future by my beautiful brother, who is part of both. Can you not see that we're extraordinary?" (236)
"I have to stop asking questions. Every time I ask a question, of Beth, of anyone, expecting something benign, or even mildly upsetting, the answer is much weirder and more terrible than I could have imagined—" (374)
"And everything that seemed possible at twenty-four, twenty-five, is now just such a joke, such a ridiculous fiction, every birthday an atrocity—" (435)
"We cannot be stopped from looking with pity upon all the world's sorry inhabitants, they unblessed by our charms, unchallenged by our trials, unscarred and thus weak, gelatinous." (50)
"So why are you here?"
"I want you to share my suffering."
"You don't seem to be suffering."
"I don't?"
"You seem happy."
"Well, sure. But not always. Sometimes it's hard. Yeah. Sometimes it's so hard. I mean, you can't always suffer. It's hard to suffer all the time. But I suffer enough. I suffer sometimes." (209)
"What would a brain do if not these sorts of exercises? I have no idea how people function without near-constant internal chaos. I'd lose my mind." (214)
"I was born of both stability and chaos. I have seen nothing and everything. I am twenty-four but feel ten thousand years old. I am emboldened by youth, unfettered and hopeful, though inextricably tied to the past and future by my beautiful brother, who is part of both. Can you not see that we're extraordinary?" (236)
"I have to stop asking questions. Every time I ask a question, of Beth, of anyone, expecting something benign, or even mildly upsetting, the answer is much weirder and more terrible than I could have imagined—" (374)
"And everything that seemed possible at twenty-four, twenty-five, is now just such a joke, such a ridiculous fiction, every birthday an atrocity—" (435)
This is a horrible book! I am not even going to finish it!
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
sad
medium-paced
*Presses all the descriptors*
Eggers wrestles with grief and bringing up his younger brother in a relatable late 20s way - everything feels imminent and huge, everything feels transient and minuscule. Pages are devoted to describing the awesomeness of his frisbee catch sessions with his brother. From acknowledgments to closing rage it’s self-effacing and uncomfortable and funny. I endured it but enjoyed it, a unique book I won’t revisit but will find hard to forget.
Eggers wrestles with grief and bringing up his younger brother in a relatable late 20s way - everything feels imminent and huge, everything feels transient and minuscule. Pages are devoted to describing the awesomeness of his frisbee catch sessions with his brother. From acknowledgments to closing rage it’s self-effacing and uncomfortable and funny. I endured it but enjoyed it, a unique book I won’t revisit but will find hard to forget.
apparently i'm on a memoir kick. this was delightful.
I didn’t like the narrator and it was too rambling so I gave myself permission not to finish, it’s the only book I haven’t finished this year.
Dave Eggers’s memoir reads like a pieced together experimentation in postmodernism, written by a man in his late 20s trying to recount his early 20s and all the selfish and absorbent attitudes that come with it. The result is ironic, comical and self-aware, making the voice of an arrogant and ambitious 21-year-old come out funny rather than annoying. The introduction, acknowledgements and corrections section (a whole 48 pages at the end of the book) point to the book’s postmodern themes, mostly the self-conscious aspect of the book combined with the unique experience of having had both parents die in the span of several months and the story to own that comes with it.
The self-absorption-self-reflection parts of this memoir make it a punchy, stream of consciousness-without-the-confusion project that's more real, letting us into the mind of a young adult and making me recount my own shitty behavior during that age. The big difference is the book is cast around Eggers’s attempt to remain this ambitious kid that wants to start his own magazine to stick it to the Man while simultaneously being responsible for his younger brother Toph. Eggers tries to be a responsible adult way earlier than he ever thought he'd be and the result is often times hilarious, mostly as he described the childish games he plays with his brother, sibling games that are innocent, mocking and loving. Throughout the book, Eggers becomes more anxious and fatalist, often times to a comic extent, the way many young adults let their inner mind torture them.
As Eggers sorts through the guilt and experience of making art out of his own tragedy, he discovers the obstacles that get in the way of his dreams, the nakedness of the memoir as art, the innocence lost with age and the entering of a world that can’t be easily recast through words.
The self-absorption-self-reflection parts of this memoir make it a punchy, stream of consciousness-without-the-confusion project that's more real, letting us into the mind of a young adult and making me recount my own shitty behavior during that age. The big difference is the book is cast around Eggers’s attempt to remain this ambitious kid that wants to start his own magazine to stick it to the Man while simultaneously being responsible for his younger brother Toph. Eggers tries to be a responsible adult way earlier than he ever thought he'd be and the result is often times hilarious, mostly as he described the childish games he plays with his brother, sibling games that are innocent, mocking and loving. Throughout the book, Eggers becomes more anxious and fatalist, often times to a comic extent, the way many young adults let their inner mind torture them.
As Eggers sorts through the guilt and experience of making art out of his own tragedy, he discovers the obstacles that get in the way of his dreams, the nakedness of the memoir as art, the innocence lost with age and the entering of a world that can’t be easily recast through words.
I remember LOVING this when I first read it but I wasn't that into it the second time around (many years later).
In short, this book is what you'd get if you put the minds of Woody Allen and Walter Mitty in one twenty-something body and allowed him unlimited access to amphetamines and a typewriter.
A wild, fast read that gets better once you let it sink in a little. Not my thing, really, but it might be an acquired taste.
A wild, fast read that gets better once you let it sink in a little. Not my thing, really, but it might be an acquired taste.