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A review by dphilton
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
2.0
I'm a big fan of Dave Eggers. What is the What is a masterpiece. The Circle was weirdly fascinating and so different. Actually, that's all I've read. Until now.
I've been meaning to get around to Egger's memoir, "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" for years, ever since my brilliant wife tore through it during a lake house vacation week. She loved it. Me, not so much.
Eggers uses his own voice to explain how he parents died in rapid succession, how he wasn't ready for responsibility, and how he and his sister did a pretty crappy job raising his younger brother who was like 11 at the time. I've heard some people say that this Eggers book is written in the style of David Foster Wallace, whose supposedly brilliant magnum opus not one can actually finish (well, me, anyway). There's something to that. Like Wallace, sparse and spare are not words he seems familiar with. This strikes me as stream of consciousness, something I'm guilty of myself. But, it feels like a forced stream. It's a tiny bit too precious, like he's worked to hard to resist editing and shaping his truth into something of real coherence.
Truman Capote said of Kerouac's On The Road, "That's not writing. That's typing." I think the same applies here.
I've been meaning to get around to Egger's memoir, "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" for years, ever since my brilliant wife tore through it during a lake house vacation week. She loved it. Me, not so much.
Eggers uses his own voice to explain how he parents died in rapid succession, how he wasn't ready for responsibility, and how he and his sister did a pretty crappy job raising his younger brother who was like 11 at the time. I've heard some people say that this Eggers book is written in the style of David Foster Wallace, whose supposedly brilliant magnum opus not one can actually finish (well, me, anyway). There's something to that. Like Wallace, sparse and spare are not words he seems familiar with. This strikes me as stream of consciousness, something I'm guilty of myself. But, it feels like a forced stream. It's a tiny bit too precious, like he's worked to hard to resist editing and shaping his truth into something of real coherence.
Truman Capote said of Kerouac's On The Road, "That's not writing. That's typing." I think the same applies here.