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A review by qtpieash3
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
1.0
Man, oh man. Where to even start?
I thoroughly disliked this book. It started off well enough; Eggers added commentary to the copyright page and had a lengthy prologue explaining some of the facets of the book, replete with flow charts and diagrams. It seemed irreverent and fresh - a good start, right?
It's a somewhat fictionalized memoir, based on a true story, if you will. Eggers writes in a stream of consciousness style that was a little tough to get used to at first. I was ready to throttle Eggers by the latter half of the book, though. Eggers' parents both die within several months of each other, leaving him (a senior in high school) and his three brothers and sisters orphans. Eggers coordinates the raising of his 8 year old brother, Toph, with his siblings.
He (Eggers) thinks he's all cutting edge and cool when in fact, he's just incredibly narcissitic. Incredibly. I get that it's written from his perspective and that alone imbues it with a certain sense of "me-ness", but Eggers takes it to the extreme. When his mother is dying, he steals away to the kitchen to write the tear-inducing, touching eulogy he'll write for her funeral. When he leaves Toph with a babysitter for a night out, he worries that the babysitter is actually a serial killer who will kill his brother while he's gone and then what would people think of him? They'd think he's an awful brother; a terrible substitute for a parent. He's so focused and stuck on his own tragic life that he becomes totally oblivious to everything and everyone around him. His friends become fodder for his own life, a paragraph in the woe-is-me story that is Dave Eggers.
I found Eggers to be ridiculous; wanting to revel in the tragic circumstances that are his life to the exclusion of everyone else's feelings. Every conversation and action are only for the cinematic value of Eggers performance. An utterly unlikeable and self-centered character that sucked the life of everything around him. Small things were huge to him; halfheartedly working on a magazine destined to fail became yet another cross Eggers could haul around and show off to anyone who would listen.
"A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius"? You wish Eggers, you wish. "A Heartbreaking Work of a Narcissit's Meaninglesss Musings" would be more apt.
I thoroughly disliked this book. It started off well enough; Eggers added commentary to the copyright page and had a lengthy prologue explaining some of the facets of the book, replete with flow charts and diagrams. It seemed irreverent and fresh - a good start, right?
It's a somewhat fictionalized memoir, based on a true story, if you will. Eggers writes in a stream of consciousness style that was a little tough to get used to at first. I was ready to throttle Eggers by the latter half of the book, though. Eggers' parents both die within several months of each other, leaving him (a senior in high school) and his three brothers and sisters orphans. Eggers coordinates the raising of his 8 year old brother, Toph, with his siblings.
He (Eggers) thinks he's all cutting edge and cool when in fact, he's just incredibly narcissitic. Incredibly. I get that it's written from his perspective and that alone imbues it with a certain sense of "me-ness", but Eggers takes it to the extreme. When his mother is dying, he steals away to the kitchen to write the tear-inducing, touching eulogy he'll write for her funeral. When he leaves Toph with a babysitter for a night out, he worries that the babysitter is actually a serial killer who will kill his brother while he's gone and then what would people think of him? They'd think he's an awful brother; a terrible substitute for a parent. He's so focused and stuck on his own tragic life that he becomes totally oblivious to everything and everyone around him. His friends become fodder for his own life, a paragraph in the woe-is-me story that is Dave Eggers.
I found Eggers to be ridiculous; wanting to revel in the tragic circumstances that are his life to the exclusion of everyone else's feelings. Every conversation and action are only for the cinematic value of Eggers performance. An utterly unlikeable and self-centered character that sucked the life of everything around him. Small things were huge to him; halfheartedly working on a magazine destined to fail became yet another cross Eggers could haul around and show off to anyone who would listen.
"A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius"? You wish Eggers, you wish. "A Heartbreaking Work of a Narcissit's Meaninglesss Musings" would be more apt.