Synopses & Reviews
"Well, this was when Bill was sighing a lot. He had decided that after our parents died he just didn't want any more fighting between what was left of us. He was twenty-four, Beth was twenty-three, I was twenty-one, Toph was eight, and all of us were so tried already, from that winter. So when something world come up, any little thing, some bill to pay or decision to make, he would just sigh, his eyes tired, his mouth in a sorry kind of smile. But Beth and I...Jesus, we were fighting with everyone, anyone, each other, with strangers at bars, anywhere -- we were angry people wanting to exact revenge. We came to California and we wanted everything, would take what was ours, anything within reach. And I decided that little Toph and I, he with his backward hat and long hair, living together in our little house in Berkeley, would be world-destroyers. We inherited each other and, we felt, a responsibility to reinvent everything, to scoff and re-create and drive fast while singing loudly and pounding the windows. It was a hopeless sort of exhilaration, a kind of arrogance born of fatalism, I guess, of the feeling that if you could lose a couple of parents in a month, then basically anything could happen, at any time -- all bullets bear your name, all cars are there to crush you, any balcony could give way; more disaster seemed only logical. And then, as in Dorothy's dream, all these people I grew up with were there, too, some of them orphans also, most but not all of us believing that what we had been given was extraordinary, that it was time to tear or break down, ruin, remake, take and devour. This was San Francisco, you know, and everyone had some dumb idea -- I mean, wicca? -- and no one there would tell you yours was doomed. Thus the public nudity, and this ridiculous magazine, and the Real World tryout, all this need, most of it disguised by sneering, but all driven by a hyper-awareness of this window, I guess, a few years when your muscles are taut, coiled up and vibrating. But what to do with the energy? I mean, when we drive, Toph and I, and we drive past people, standing on top of all these hills, part of me wants to stop the car and turn up the radio and have us all dance in formation, and part of me wants to run them all over."
Review
"Eggers evokes the terrible beauty of youth like a young Bob Dylan, frothing with furious anger....A comic and moving witness that transcends and transgresses formal boundaries." Washington Post
Review
"A brave work, and not a little heartbreaking." National Post
Review
"Eggers unfailingly captures the reader with gorgeous conviction." Lynn Crosbie, The Toronto Star
Review
"A virtuosic piece of writing, a big, daring, manic-depressive stew of a book that noisily announces the debut of a talented yes, staggeringly talented new writer." Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
Review
"Scathingly perceptive and hysterically funny....Eggers reveals a true, and truly broken, heart." People
Review
"Eggers crafts something universal here, something raw and real and wonderful that transcends any zeitgeist and manages to deal trenchantly with 'big issues' that often prove too daunting for younger writers: mortality, youth, the artifice of writing, the Zen of Frisbee. This is laugh-out-loud funny and utterly unforgettable." San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"It's James Joyce, back from the dead!....And he's got some Proust in him, the little 29-year-old-jerk, he's got the trammeling thoroughness of Proust's observation, his honest observations of artifice. The book is fine and different for earnest reasons, too....How generous of him to write this for us, to reveal all this so fearlessly, like Joyce, like Proust." Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times Book Review, 01/30/2000*
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Synopsis
One of the most mesmerizing memoirs of the literary season: a wrenching, hilarious, and stylistically groundbreaking story of a college senior who, in the space of five weeks, loses both of his parents to cancer and inherits his eight-year-old brother.
Synopsis
The literary sensation of the year, a book that redefines both family and narrative for the twenty-first century.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is the moving memoir of a college senior who, in the space of five weeks, loses both of his parents to cancer and inherits his eight-year-old brother. Here is an exhilarating debut that manages to be simultaneously hilarious and wildly inventive as well as a deeply heartfelt story of the love that holds a family together.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is an instant classic that will be read in paperback for decades to come. The Vintage edition includes a new appendix by the author.
Synopsis
"I think this book is kind of malleable. I've never really wanted to put it away and be done with it forever -- the second I first 'finished' it, I wanted to dig back in and change everything around. So I'm looking forward to getting back into the text, and straightening and focusing and deleting. Most of all, I'm thrilled that Vintage will be letting me include all the cool chase scenes, previously censored." -- Dave Eggers
The literary sensation of the year, a book that redefines both family and narrative for the twenty-first century. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is the moving memoir of a college senior who, in the space of five weeks, loses both of his parents to cancer and inherits his seven-year-old brother. Here is an exhilarating debut that manages to be simultaneously hilarious and wildly inventive as well as a deeply heartfelt story of the love that holds a family together.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is an instant classic that will be read in paperback for decades to come.
PAPERBACK EDITION -- 15% MORE STAGGERING - Eggers has written 15,000 additional words for the Vintage Canada edition, including an entirely new appendix.
Synopsis
The literary sensation of the year, a book that redefines both family and narrative for the twenty-first century.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is the moving memoir of a college senior who, in the space of five weeks, loses both of his parents to cancer and inherits his eight-year-old brother. Here is an exhilarating debut that manages to be simultaneously hilarious and wildly inventive as well as a deeply heartfelt story of the love that holds a family together.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is an instant classic that will be read in paperback for decades to come. The Vintage edition includes a new appendix by the author.
About the Author
Dave Eggers, a founding editor of Might magazine and contributor to many periodicals, is now the editor of McSweeney's, a quarterly journal. He lives in Brooklyn with his brother.
Table of Contents
Contents Rules and Suggestions for Enjoyment of This Book
Preface to This Edition
Contents
Acknowledgments
Incomplete Guide to Symbols and Metaphors
PART I.
THROUGH THE SMALL TALL BATHROOM WINDOW, ETC.
Scatology -- video games -- blood -- "blind leaders of the blind" [Bible] -- some violence -- turtles -- embarrassment, naked men -- mapping
PART II.
PLEASE LOOK. CAN YOU SEE US, ETC.
California -- ocean plunging, frothing -- Little League, black mothers -- rotation and substitution -- hills, views, roofs, toothpicks -- numbing and sensation -- Johnny Bench -- motion
PART III.
THE ENEMIES LIST, ETC.
Demotion -- teachers driven before us -- menu -- plane crash -- light -- knife -- Barry Gifford -- State of the Family Room Address -- half-cantaloupes -- so like a fragile girl -- old model, new model -- Bob Fosse Presents
PART IV.
OH I COULD BE GOING OUT, SURE
But no. No no! -- the weight -- seven years one's senior, how fitting -- potential sagging -- John Doe -- decay v. preservation -- burgundy, bolts
PART V.
OUTSIDE IT'S BLUE-BLACK AND GETTING DARKER, ETC.
Stephen, murderer, surely -- The Bridge -- Jon and Pontius Pilate -- John, Moodie, et al. -- Merchant Marine -- lies -- a stolen wallet -- the 99th percentile -- Mexican kids -- lineups, lights -- a trail of blood, and then silence, and then Russia
PART VI.
WHEN WE HEAR THE NEWS AT FIRST
What's In, What's Out -- mailing lists -- daughter of Charles Bronson, stunning -- [some mild nudity] -- Randy Stickrod -- all the hope of history to date -- an interview -- death and suicide -- mistakes -- keg beer -- Mr. T -- Steve the Black Guy -- a death faked, perhaps (the gray car) -- a possible escape, via rope, of sheets -- a broken door -- betrayal justified
PART VII.
FUCK IT. STUPID SHOW, ETC.
Some bitterness, some calculation -- Or anything that looks un-us -- more nudity, still mild -- of color, who is of color? -- Chakka the Pakuni -- hairy all the crotches are, bursting from panties and briefs -- The Marina -- The flying-object maneuver -- drama or blood or his mouth foaming or -- a hundred cymbals -- would you serve them grapes? Would that be wrong? -- "So I'm not allowed" -- Details of all this will be good
PART VIII.
WE CAN'T DO ANYTHING ABOUT THE EXCREMENT
Elliot Strunk -- The Future -- "Slacker? Not me," laughs Hillman -- Meath: Oh yeah, we love that multicultural stuff -- "Isn't that great?" -- We fill out forms -- a kindly Betty White sort -- "a nightmare WASP utopia" -- a sexual sort of lushness -- There has been Spin the Bottle -- "I don't know" -- "Thank you, Jesus" -- "I'm dying, Shal"
PART IX.
ROBERT URICH SAYS NO. WE WERE SO CLOSE
Laura Branigan, Lori Singer, Ed Begley, Jr. -- to be thought of as smart, legitimate, permanent. So you do your little thing -- a bitchy little thing about her -- a fall -- the halls, shabbily shiny, are filled with people in small clumps -- that Polly Klaas guy giving me the finger at the trial -- Adam, by association, unimpressive
PART X.
OF COURSE IT'S COLD.
The cold when walking off the plane -- plans for a kind of personal archaeological orgy or something, from funeral homes to John Hussa, whose mom heated milk once, after Grizzly -- weddings -- a lesbian agnostic named Minister Lovejoy -- Chad and the copies -- leaf pile -- another threat -- of course she knows -- wouldn't everyone be able to tell? -- the water rising, as if under it already
PART XI.
BLACK SANDS BEACH IS
No hands -- down the hill, the walk -- not NAMBLA -- birthday, parquet -- Skye -- hot, poisoned blood -- jail, bail, the oracle -- more maneuvers -- a fight -- finally
Reading Group Guide
1.
The material preceding the main text in this book--called "front matter" in the publishing business--has been entirely taken over by the author, including the usually very official copyright page. Why might the publisher have allowed Eggers to take this unconventional route? Why does Eggers work so extensively at disrupting the formality of publication and his status as an author?
2. On the copyright page we find the statement, "This is a work of fiction"; and at the beginning of the preface Eggers writes, "This is not, actually, a work of pure nonfiction." What point is Eggers making by casting all these doubts on the veracity of the book's contents? In his discussion about the current popularity of memoirs [pp. xxiÐxxiii], Eggers admits that the book is a memoir but encourages his readers to think of it as fiction. What is the difference, in a work of literature, between fact and fiction, and does it matter?
3. In the remarkable acknowledgments section, which is a brilliant critique and discussion of the book as a whole, Eggers points out that "the success of a memoir . . . has a lot to do with how appealing its narrator is" [p. xxvii]. What is appealing about Eggers as a narrator?
4. Eggers notes that the first major theme of the book is "The Unspoken Magic of Parental Disappearance" [p. xxviii]. It is a psychological truism that most children occasionally fantasize about being orphans, because parents often stand in the way of their children's desires. Along these lines, Eggers admits that the loss of his parents is "accompanied by an undeniable but then of course guilt-inducing sense of mobility, of infinite possibility" [p. xxix]. Does he ever find a way to resolve his conflicting emotions of grief and guilt?
5. If it is true, as Eggers points out, that he is not the first person whose parents died or who was left with the care of a sibling, what makes his story unique?
6. Eggers worries that because he is neither a woman nor a neat, well-organized person [pp. 81, 99], people assume that he can't take care of Toph. Which aspects of Eggers' parenting are most admirable? Which are most comic? What are the benefits and drawbacks of each aspect?
7. How do Eggers' memories of his father compare to those about his mother? To what degree are his feelings about his parents resolved, or at least assuaged, through the act of writing this book?
8. Much of the central part of the book relates to the business of launching and producing Might magazine. What does this section reveal about the concerns, desires, and frustrations of thoughtful, energetic twenty-somethings in contemporary America?
9. Eggers expresses ambivalence about having written this book because he feels guilty about exploiting his family's misfortune and exposing a private matter to the public. Among the epigraphs that Eggers considered, and then didn't use, for the book are "Why not just write what happened?" (R. Lowell) and "Ooh, look at me, I'm Dave, I'm writing a book! With all my thoughts in it! La la la!" (Christopher Eggers) [p. xvii]. How do these two epigraphs crystallize the memoir writer's dilemma?
10. Why does Eggers judge himself so harshly for returning to the family's old house in Lake Forest and for trying to retrieve his mother's ashes? Does the trip provide him and his story with a sense of closure, or just the opposite? Is there a central revelation to Eggers' narrative, a strong sense of change or a significant development? Or would you say, on the contrary, that the book has the haphazardness and lack of structure that we find in real life?
11. Eggers refers, half-jokingly, half-seriously, to himself and Toph as "God's tragic envoys" [p. 73]. Is it true, as Eggers suggests, that tragic occurrences give those to whom they happen the feeling of having been singled out for a special destiny? Is it common among those who have suffered intensely to expect some sort of recompense?
12. Recurring throughout the interview for MTV's The Real World [chapter VI] is the image of what Eggers calls "the lattice." What does he mean by this, and does it amount to a kind of spiritual belief on his part?
13. Mary Park, writing for Amazon.com, notes that "Eggers comes from the most media-saturated generation in history--so much so that he can't feel an emotion without the sense that it's already been felt for him. . . . Oddly enough, the effect is one of complete sincerity." How does Eggers manage to turn his generation's burdens of self-consciousness into strengths? What are the qualities that make his writing so vivid and memorable?