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A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius

A Memoir Based on a True Story

By Dave Eggers

(136)

| 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 sContinue

"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

7 Reviews

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  • 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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