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A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius

A Memoir Based on a True Story

By Dave Eggers

(129)

| Hardcover | 9780684863474

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Book Description

"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."

Critics

Come to the cabaret

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius Dave Eggers Picador, £9.99, 375pp Buy it at BOL What would Dave Eggers have done with his life had his parents not died of cancer, one after the other, in the space of 32 days, leaving him - a boyish 21-year- ... (read full critics)

guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

To lose one parent...

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius Dave Eggers Picador £14.99, pp400 Buy it at BOL Wilde's Lady Bracknell, majestically intolerant of abnormality, would not have been impressed by the predicament of Dave Eggers. At the age of 21, he was carele ... (read full critics)

guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

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9 Reviews

2 people find this helpful

Eggers, Dave (2000). A Heartbreaking Work of a Staggering Genius. London: Picador. 2007.
Mi è sempre difficile recensire i libri di culto, come questo. Anche se sono un lettore esperto (e accanito), sono però abbastanza umile da avere il sospetto di essere io a non aver compreso la bellezza di ... (continue)

Eggers, Dave (2000). A Heartbreaking Work of a Staggering Genius. London: Picador. 2007.
Mi è sempre difficile recensire i libri di culto, come questo. Anche se sono un lettore esperto (e accanito), sono però abbastanza umile da avere il sospetto di essere io a non aver compreso la bellezza di un romanzo che mi ha, invece, lasciato piuttosto freddo.
Ad aggravare la situazione, c’è che molti hanno paragonato questo “romanzo” a The Catcher in the Rye (Il giovane Holden). E a me (lo confesso) il celeberrimo romanzo di Salinger non ha entusiasmato, proprio per gli stessi motivi che mi lasciano perplesso in Eggers: troppo parlarsi addosso, troppo autocompiacimento, troppa ipertrofia dell’ego adolescenziale. Perdinci, mi sono liberato dei tormenti adolescenziali da pochissimo, dopo i 50 e (sospetto) per un deficit di testosterone (altrimenti, perché riceverei decine di email ogni giorno che mi suggeriscono di fare qualcosa per recuperare ed estendere la mia virilità?), e perché adesso dovrei farmi prendere dai tormenti adolescenzialidi qualcun altro?
Qualcosa, tuttavia, a difesa di Eggers va detto:
1. Il libro non è un romanzo, ma una memoria. Eggers lo dice con onestà fin dall’inizio, nelle prime righe della Prefazione, anche se in modo caratteristicamente un po’ obliquo: “this is not, actually, a work of pure nonfiction”. Ma comunque un’opera di nonfiction, e così la classifica l’autore stesso nel suo sito.
2. L’autore è del tutto onesto nelle sue intenzioni, in modo quasi disarmante. Le regole e i suggerimenti per meglio godere il libro, che sono letteralmente all’inizio del tutto, sono letteralmente oneste (anche se ti viene il sospetto che l’autore stia un po’ ciurlando nel manico). È vero che si possono tranquillamente saltare la Prefazione, gli Acknowledgments e la Table of contents. È vero che la parte centrale del libro, soprattutto i capitoli VII VIII e IX, è la più debole: nel mio caso, è stata quella dove più spesso mi ha colkto la stanchezza (letteralmente, mi si chiudevano gli occhi e dopo un po’ il libro mi cadeva di mano – dopo un po’ perché sono ormai un maestro dell’addormentarmi mantenendo il libro stretto ed eretto come se stessi ancora leggendo). Il fatto è che la vita di un gruppetto di ventenni è spesso difficile da rendere interessante (questo lo scrive Eggers) e che gli espedienti letterari che Eggers usa peggiorano la situazione invece di migliorarla (questo lo dico io).
3. È vero, soprattutto, che i primi 4 capitoli formerebbero un romanzo breve in sé perfetto e concluso.
Insomma, Eggers ha scritto da solo la migliore recensione del suo libro che si potesse scrivere. E a me, allora, che cosa resta da dire?
Intanto, che Eggers si sottovaluta. Quei primi 4 capitoli sono un capolavoro. Un capolavoro dolorosissimo, e capirete perché quando lo leggerete. Io ho avuto, purtroppo, un esperienza per metà simile (nella perdita precoce di un genitore, non nel ruolo del fratello-padre) e riconosco a Eggers la profonda verità, sincerità e capacità di trasfigurare in arte il suo vissuto. Sono 123 pagine indimenticabili. Da cui non riesci a staccarti, né mentre le leggi, né quando le ripercorri nella memoria.
L’altra cosa che mi è piaciuta moltissimo è la consapevolezza dell’autore (Eggers aveva 30 anni quando ha pubblicato questo libro). C’è una conversazione rivelatrice tra l’autore e John, verso la fine del libro:
[John] “I mean, how much do you really care about me, outside of my usefulness as some kind of cautionary tale, a stand-in for someone else, for your dad, for these people who disappoint you—”
[Dave] “You are so like him.”
“Fuck you. I am not him.”
“But you are.”
“Let me out.”
“No.”
“l’m not this. I can’t be reduced to this.”
“You did it yourself.”
“I am more than this.”
“Are you?”
“I cannot be used to get back at your dad. Your dad is not a lesson. I am not a lesson. You are not a teacher.”
“You wanted this. You wanted the attention.”
“Whatever. I’m just another one of the people whose tragedies you felt fit into the overall message. You don’t really care so much about the people who just get along and do fine, do you? Those people don’t make it into the story, do they?”
[...]
[John] “All to help make some point. l mean, isn’t it odd that someone like Shalini, for example, who really wasn’t one of your closest friends, is suddenly this major presence? And why? Because your other friends had the misfortune not to be misfortunate. The only people who get speaking parts are those whose lives are grabbed by chaos—”
“l am allowed.”
“No.”
“l am allowed—”
“No. And poor Toph. l wonder how much say he had in this whole process. You’ll claim that he had full approval, thought it was great, hilarious, etc., and maybe he did, but how happy do you think he is about alI this? lt’s disgusting, the whole enterprise.”
“lt’s too big for you to understand. You know nothing about us.”
“Oh God.”
“lt’s enlightenmeot, inspiration. Proof.”
“No. You know what it is? lt’s entertainment. If you back up far enough, it all becomes a sort of show. You grew up with comforts, without danger, and now you have to seek it out, manufacture it, or, worse, use the misfortunes of friends and acquaintances to add drama to your own life. But see, you cannot move real people around like this, twist their arms and legs, position them, dress them, make them talk—”
“l am allowed.”
“You’re not.”
“l am owed.”
“You’re not. See— You’re just not. You’re like a … a cannibal or something. Don’t you see how this is just flesh-eating? You’re making lampshades from human sk—”
“Oh Jesus.”
“Let me out.”
“l can’t let you out here.”
“Let me out. I’ll walk. And l don’t want to be your fuel, your food.”
“l would do it for you.”
“Right.”
“l would feed myself to you.”
“l don’t want you to feed yourself to me. And l don’t want to devour you. l don ‘t want to use you as fuel. l don’t want anything from you. You think that because you had things taken from you, that you can just take and take—everything. But you know, not everyone wants to eat each other all the time, not everyone wants to—”
“We are all feeding from each other, all the time, every day.”
“No.”
“Yes. That’s what we do, as people.”
“For you it’s all blood and revenge, but you know, there is more, or rather less, to all this than that. Not everyone is so angry, and so desperate, and hungry—” [pp. 423-425]

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Boris Limpopo said on Jan 8, 2009 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

2 people find this helpful

This book has a great shot of being one of the items read in high school across the country in 2050, when teachers are trying to snapshot life in the late 20th century.

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Bossdog said on Aug 2, 2007 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

He's such a snob! A poser. A hipster of our days. In this, actually, he has been innovative, absolutely ahead of our time.
Then, with his permanent attempt to look direct and sincere and brutal he sounds to me more cerebral than honest, and even more self-congratulating than realist. In some way, fa ... (continue)

He's such a snob! A poser. A hipster of our days. In this, actually, he has been innovative, absolutely ahead of our time.
Then, with his permanent attempt to look direct and sincere and brutal he sounds to me more cerebral than honest, and even more self-congratulating than realist. In some way, fake.
After all, pretty boring, especially the part about the foundation of his cool magazine in San Francisco and the too long interview for the application for Real world. But I must acknowledge that some pages are beautiful and others quite brilliant.

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orlando said on Jan 25, 2012 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

Before I picked up this book I had heard endless tales of how wonderfully smart and funny this book was, how terrific the writing was and how the originality would slap me in the face like a cool wind on a summer's day. They were wrong. I hated this book like The Cure hates happiness.
I understand ... (continue)

Before I picked up this book I had heard endless tales of how wonderfully smart and funny this book was, how terrific the writing was and how the originality would slap me in the face like a cool wind on a summer's day. They were wrong. I hated this book like The Cure hates happiness.
I understand writer's have their own style, and that is what, in and of itself, separates them from all the others. But, seriously, we learn paragraph breaks for a reason. It gives the mind's eye a break, a breather. Eggers, a rebel in his own mind, discards such mannerisms.
Aside from that debilitating hindrance, the book is THE example for egotism gone awry. Now, before you start, yes, I am aware that a memoir book is, essentially, an ego stroke. But the good writers, they have the ability to make you forget that it's merely self-indulgence, sweep you up in their lives...in their story. Rather than want to beg the author in so many ways as to warrant that 500 feet order to invite you over, Eggers is the kind of guy you would actually go out of your way to avoid.

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Clementine said on May 20, 2011 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

For me this book gave a glimpse of how it is to be a male.
Genius.

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Helena said on Sep 12, 2010 | Add your feedback

This book was pretty bad in my opinion. In fact, I'm not even going to finish it. I don't care if it's fiction, biography, or memoir, I couldn't get past the author's monster ego. Even then if the story was good, I can usually overlook it long enough to appreciate the story and mention it when I rev ... (continue)

This book was pretty bad in my opinion. In fact, I'm not even going to finish it. I don't care if it's fiction, biography, or memoir, I couldn't get past the author's monster ego. Even then if the story was good, I can usually overlook it long enough to appreciate the story and mention it when I review it, or chat about the book with a friend, but the author too frequently sidetracks from the story where we have to endure paragraphs of endless rambling thoughts. When I start thinking about what to make for dinner, or to remember to pay the hydro bill, it's time to move on to something else. Pretty terrible for me, which is too bad, it started out well and could have been a great tale if not for the raging ego and incessant rambling.
A Heartbreaking work of Staggering genius... I think not.

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Leahrussell76 said on Sep 12, 2009 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

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Book Details

Rating:
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English Books
Hardcover 416 Pages
ISBN-10: 0684863472
ISBN-13: 9780684863474
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Pub date: Feb 17, 2000
Also available as: Paperback, Audio CD, School & Library Binding and Others
In other languages: other languages Livres Français, Deutsche Bücher, Libros en Español, Libri Italiani, Danske bøger