A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Dave Eggers had an extremely rough go of it in his early 20s. He lost both of his parents, to cancer, one just about a month after the other, when he was only a senior in college. In his memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Eggers recounts those deaths and his subsequent guardianship of his 8 year-old brother, Toph. The Eggers brothers leave their Illinois home behind and move to the Bay Area, in part to stay close to their older sister Beth, and in part for career opportunities for Dave as he tries to get a new magazine, Might, off the ground while also trying to figure out how to raise a child.

Before I even picked this book up, I was aware that it seems to inspire strong feelings. Some people HATE it and some people think it's magnificent. How you will receive this book depends entirely on how you feel about Eggers' writing. If you think his stream-of-consciousness, wildly tangential, constantly-on-the-verge-of-a-panic-attack style of narrative is great, you'll think this book is amazing. If, however, you want a straightforward, relatively linear narrative, you will think this is the worst thing you've ever read.

It feels beside the point to talk about story structure, because there isn't really any (it's very hard to tell how fast time is passing and there aren't really narrative beats to speak of), or character development, because there isn't really any of that either. Even for a memoir, a sense of story and character tend to be important, but neither is a priority for Eggers. While I'm usually fairly open to nontraditional narrative, this book is 100% style over substance. The most compelling part, for me, was the relationship between Dave and Toph, and Dave wrestling with both his fierce love and concern for his brother and his acknowledged resentment of being prematurely thrust into a parental role. However, I mostly found it tiresome. It held my attention inconsistently at best, I was usually bored long before a particular side riff was over. Eggers' flaw isn't that he's wildly self-absorbed (I think memoir is an inherently self-absorbed form since it's literally assuming that your own life is so compelling that other people want to read about it), but that he's not nearly as interesting as he thinks he is. I wouldn't recommend this book, but I wouldn't tear it out of anyone's hands and I can understand why some people really respond to it. I just didn't.

I got the edition that has the “Mistakes We Knew We Made” appendix attached. I skipped it. I had had enough.

It worked for me for the first couple of chapters. The graphic descriptions of the mother's illness (“podules”, “green fluids”) were an effective, visceral way of gaining sympathy. The sympathy lasts after the parents are gone, when Dave and Toph are living in California. He says “we are owed” and I can give him that, even if I don't believe it. They suffered a tragedy, sure, but they're not the only ones to ever have parents die. The hubris is endearing until the sympathy wears off... by the time we get to Dave's work at the magazine and the extended “interview” with MTV, the overconfident tone became obnoxious to me.

I'm not even mentioning the extended meta-commentary in the acknowledgements at the beginning. Not a good start for me... I was like, really? You're explaining your themes before the book starts?

Honestly, I thought this book was overhyped. At times Eggers is clever, but mainly this memoir is filled with his rambling and stream of consciousness style of writing that became annoying since it amounted to nothing. Aside from listing every tragedy he or his friends experienced I'm not sure why he even needed a memoir. Was I supposed to learn something from this? I didn't.

I have re-read this book several times and I still love it. I've read reviews complaining about how pretentious Dave Eggers is and like... I'm not gonna tell you this book isn't pretentious. I'm just going to tell you that I love it anyway. Actually maybe I love it because of how pretentious it is. Maybe I love it because Eggers hates how pretentious it is yet clearly cannot help himself.
—
I just read this again because I have been having some bad months and I thought this would make me feel better. It did. But also worse. But in a good way. You know?
—
I read this in high school and just re-read it to see if I still loved it as much as I did.. six? Seven? years ago. The answer is YES. This is one of my favorite books of all time and I think you should go read it, right now. I love it because it shows you can be cynical and hip and postmodern and still know that there is beauty in life.