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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."
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- Book Details
- English Books
- Rating:
(93)
4 stars 
3 stars 2 stars 1 star - Paperback 400 Pages
- Edition: New Ed
- ISBN-10: 0330484559
- ISBN-13: 9780330484558
- Publisher: Picador
- Pub date: Feb 09, 2001
- Dimensions: 20 cm x 13 cm x 4 cm Just how big is that?
- Also available as: Hardcover, School & Library Binding and Others
- In another language:
L'opera struggente di un formidabile genio
(Libri Italiani)
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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.
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]
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.
A nice beginning with lots of bravura, but the voice soon annoyed me.
autobiografia di Eggers, rimasto orfano a vent'anni di entrambi i genitori. Racconta con umorismo e rabbia il suo dover crescere con un fratellino in un mondo ostile.
La prefazione e la gerenza meritano un voto altissimo. Le restanti 300/400 pagine sono una sorta di Douglas Coupland non troppo riuscito. Il romanzo, più che un percorso, mi è risultato una serie sbilanciata di aneddoti. Con poco sforzo di più avrebbe raggiunto la terza stellina nella votazione - pe ... Continue
La prefazione e la gerenza meritano un voto altissimo. Le restanti 300/400 pagine sono una sorta di Douglas Coupland non troppo riuscito. Il romanzo, più che un percorso, mi è risultato una serie sbilanciata di aneddoti. Con poco sforzo di più avrebbe raggiunto la terza stellina nella votazione - però purtroppo...