A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

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I finally read AHWOSG after hearing raves about it for many years. I was very disappointed. The first 75 pages or so about the parents' deaths was very engaging and gave me false hopes. The remainder of the book was tedious, pretentious and incredibly boring. The author seems to write as if he was a 22 year-old, the age of the character. I guess Eggers doesn't know that an actual writer can write in the guise of a younger character without losing his skills such as grammar, punctuation, no run-on sentences. 99% of 22 year-olds do not have enough life experience to be interesting for 400 pages. An editor would have been helpful. At least 100 pages should be deleted especially the long section on the MTV interview -- I had to skip over most of it because it was so horrible. Unfortunately, my opinion is very late for most readers. Maybe if Eggers ever decides to reprint this memoir, he could do so as a 200 (or less) page novella. What a shame to have wasted $10,000 on a useless 'zine rather than on something like .....oh I don't know.....child care!

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A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

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This book is so unimaginably bad that the only way its title's words have any relevance is if they are applied to negatives. Fortunately, I borrowed the book from my mother-in-law and did not help enrich this pr-drenched hack. Genius fails both of my factors for memoir excellence by a ton. His life, if truly represented in the memoir, is dull, self-pitying, and self-aggrandizing. His is the archetypal life of `quiet desperation' gone Madison Avenue. In short, his life is neither interesting nor important. Worse, though, is that he is not even a passable prosist. And it's not because he's stretching forms, nor anything near-Joycean, it's that he simply cannot write a compelling sentence, much less a compelling narrative. I am not a believer in Chicken Littleism, that all was better yester, for things go in cycles, but Genius is a book that is horrendous writing in any day. Even 20 years ago it would have been laughed at by any publisher. Before I detail its execrability, let me opine on the reasons it became a bestseller. Genius comes after a couple of decades of MTV, computer games, porno on command, and Political Correctness. I.e.- the self and its instant gratification is the leading mover of advertising, politics, and now art. Eggers may be a genius, but its not in literature, but in marketing. His book is the literary equivalent of the pet rock of the 1970s.

I defy any reader of Genius to be able to point to a single well-crafted description, or a memorable scene. There are none. Is there even a well-written or memorable paragraph or sentence? 0 for 2. Eggers even celebrates his illiteracy with a near 50 page prologue that is meant as meta-humor, but is really just piffle, for it is not deep, not insightful, nor even original. Its real reason is to try to distract the reader from expecting that Eggers can actually write. This is the same ill that afflicts the work of Jackson Pollock- had he limited his drippings to a series of, say, 8-12 paintings one might legitimately scan the corpus for meaning. But to make a career out of dripping manifests the fact that the man did not really have a coherent, nor deep, vision. Had Eggers limited his wisecracking to 2- 3 pages tops, he may have been falsely accused of having a sense of humor. The bloat that was printed is merely the equivalent of a liar needing to constantly elaborate on his lies just so the prescients among us don't suspect. Of course, we do, and the best of us know a put-on when we read it. Yet, Eggers thinks that if he pretends his prose's lack of craft is a choice, then its failings are good, because for someone to write that badly and get published must mean there is a deeper meaning within. Hold on, reader, let me get that full guffaw out of the way....There. For years, at the Uptown Poetry Group, I would have to explain to young teenagers who thought that their poorly constructed and dull rants of how dull it was to write poorly constructed and dull rants about being bored in a café were not genius, nor even insightful. They were most floored when I told them that such rants were not even original. Eggers' masturbation is what it is- masturbation alone. In short, a writer cannot effectively illustrate his character is bored by writing boringly. Some of the dullest characters in literary history were the fops whose lives were penned by Oscar Wilde- `nuff said.

On to the book's tale: the first 30 or so pages follow his mother's death by cancer. She pukes, she excretes, she spits, and this is supposed to invoke sympathy as Eggers describes how wretched his dying mother is. Then, before she finally kicks off (at which point the reader is delighted) his dad drops dead. Dozens of pages in and this is all that has happened, save for some banal conversation, and finding out he comes from an upper middle class, if not wealthy, family. Eggers has an absolutely tin ear for conversation- both in its content and in its utterance, plus he has no idea how conversation serves narrative- to push it along. I.e.- conversation is usually only superior to narration if it can capture the specifics, emotional intensity, or the essence of the moment or narrative better than a narration could. Also, conversation has to be interesting enough to stand on its own. Real banal banter is not good writing. Good conversation is written to be read and reread with appreciation, yet to fool the reader into believing someone might actually be profound enough to say what they say, even if unwittingly.

Example A of Eggers' tin ear for conversation: (from pages 22-23)

`Hi,' I say.

`Hi,' Toph says.

`How's it going?'

`Fine.'

`Are you still hungry?'

`What?'

`Are you still hungry?'

`What?'

`Pause the stupid game.'

`Okay.'

`Can you hear me?'

`Yes.'

`Are you listening?'

`Yes.'

`Do you still want food?'

`Yeah.'

Now, I've taken a snip from a longer exchange, but this is typical of the conversation, one designed to show the relationship of Eggers to his baby brother Christopher (Toph). About 40% of the book is literally devoted to conversations of this depth. The fact is that most vapid people are vaguely aware of their state, and reveal the depths of their vapidity by trying to cover it up with poorly advised forays into bad philosophy or polysyllabicism. Eggers is not even clued in enough to recognize this point....Even worse than the tin-eared conversations is the utterly Dick & Jane-like A to B to C narrative. There is nary a moment of true reflection in the whole book. Whether this is because Eggers is simply vapid, or thinks his readers are is not important- the vapidity is. Instead, the whole book, especially the first third is nothing but self-referential pap- be it in advertisements of brand name products (the film version will score a coup in product placements), mention of rock groups, computer games, tv shows and characters, and pop arcana that only a decade on is already as dated as the courtly intrigues of John Dryden's poetry.

What Eggers and his admirers believe to be in the vein of Joyce and Woolf is nothing better than the PC MFA workshopped drivel it sneers at. In fact, it's probably worse because an occasional moment of sincerity might lend an oasised sentence or paragraph of sustained clarity in the midst of those deserts. Genius is merely PC workshop smart aleck writing that thinks it's brilliant for its un-wry comments on things that have no staying power to begin with.

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A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

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I bought this book because of all the rave reviews from critics and the because it was a Pulitzer finalist. I read the first one-third of the story and really enjoyed his candid writing style. I am from the Bay Area and too lost my mother at an early age, so I really related to both his accounts of Berkeley/SF life and people, as well as grieving the loss of a parent at a young age. His anger toward the insensitivity of others was frank. His urgency to protect his little brother from the realities of death and loss are memorable. His writing style is both vivid and candid, however very very detailed. At first this was interesting and kept my attention, but after the first 5 chapters or so, was a slow moving book. I found myself skipping chapters. Overall a decent read though.

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