A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

by Dave Eggers

book data

40,153 ratings, 3.58 average rating, 4,158 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		24%
4		33%
3		24%
2		11%
1		6%

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published

February 13th 2001 (first published 2000) by Vintage

binding

Paperback, 496 pages

isbn

0375725784 (isbn13: 9780375725784)

description

Dave Eggers is a terrifically talented writer; don't hold his cleverness against him. What to make of a book called A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering...more

[close] Dave Eggers is a terrifically talented writer; don't hold his cleverness against him. What to make of a book called A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: Based on a True Story? For starters, there's a good bit of staggering genius before you even get to the true story, including a preface, a list of "Rules and Suggestions for Enjoyment of This Book," and a 20-page acknowledgements section complete with special mail-in offer, flow chart of the book's themes, and a lovely pen-and-ink drawing of a stapler (helpfully labeled "Here is a drawing of a stapler:").

But on to the true story. At the age of 22, Eggers became both an orphan and a "single mother" when his parents died within five months of one another of unrelated cancers. In the ensuing sibling division of labor, Dave is appointed unofficial guardian of his 8-year-old brother, Christopher. The two live together in semi-squalor, decaying food and sports equipment scattered about, while Eggers worries obsessively about child-welfare authorities, molesting babysitters, and his own health. His child-rearing strategy swings between making his brother's upbringing manically fun and performing bizarre developmental experiments on him. (Case in point: his idea of suitable bedtime reading is John Hersey's Hiroshima.)

The book is also, perhaps less successfully, about being young and hip and out to conquer the world (in an ironic, media-savvy, Gen-X way, naturally). In the early '90s, Eggers was one of the founders of the very funny Might Magazine, and he spends a fair amount of time here on Might, the hipster culture of San Francisco's South Park, and his own efforts to get on to MTV's Real World. This sort of thing doesn't age very well--but then, Eggers knows that. There's no criticism you can come up with that he hasn't put into A.H.W.O.S.G. already. "The book thereafter is kind of uneven," he tells us regarding the contents after page 109, and while that's true, it's still uneven in a way that is funny and heartfelt and interesting.

All this self-consciousness could have become unbearably arch. It's a testament to Eggers's skill as a writer--and to the heartbreaking particulars of his story--that it doesn't. Currently the editor of the footnote-and-marginalia-intensive journal McSweeney's (the last issue featured an entire story by David Foster Wallace printed tinily on its spine), 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. What may seem like postmodern noodling is really just Eggers writing about pain in the only honest way available to him. Oddly enough, the effect is one of complete sincerity, and--especially in its concluding pages--this memoir as metafiction is affecting beyond all rational explanation.

--Mary Park [close]

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03/29/08

Tara rated it:

One of my least favorite books of all time! I think it's a sack of bullshit, to be perfectly honest. It was one of those books where I cringed with frustration as I turned every page, and I only wanted to finish it so that I could say I found nothing redeeming about it. Oh sure, he was flashy and could draw a cheap laugh, but it was like admiration for bubbles: it went nowhere and said nothing. I was disgusted with the title when I first heard of it, and though I can see there's some self-ridicu...more One of my least favorite books of all time! I think it's a sack of bullshit, to be perfectly honest. It was one of those books where I cringed with frustration as I turned every page, and I only wanted to finish it so that I could say I found nothing redeeming about it. Oh sure, he was flashy and could draw a cheap laugh, but it was like admiration for bubbles: it went nowhere and said nothing. I was disgusted with the title when I first heard of it, and though I can see there's some self-ridicule going on, I can also see that no, there's not, and he's really pretty satisfied with himself. I then heard so much lovely stuff about it, which worries me now in retrospect, but I tried it with an open mind; nah, it blows. I won't even go into the hundred reasons why it sucks, since the author is such a vapid creature full of style and lacking substance, that the book doesn't really merit an intellectual attack. In fact, to really put it out there, I think it's every single thing that is wrong with certain aspects of modern literature. Foster Wallace and Eggers can suck my metaphorical dick, since they seem to exist for nothing else but their own pretension. Way to reveal modern angst boys, sorry that people a lot smarter did it better a hundred years ago, and said something relevant for people who weren't self-absorbed fops. I look forward to a future world cataclysm in which this book can be lost, and something worthwhile take its place in the literary canon. (Also, I apologize to all the people who really sincerely love this book. I know I like some things that can be deemed pretty trivial. And who knows, maybe the author is a nice enough guy. I just, I gotta say it, I really can't stand this book, and wish there were better books around to take away some of its appeal. Art for the ego just doesn't seem enough).

*since i've written my original review i've gotten lots of angry messages. first off, my respect for a book does not increase when it's audience loves e-mailing me to tell me Just How Wrong I Am for not Loving it to Death. i've been told (??) what a hipster i am for disliking it, and how much i must love frazier (??). Whoa. This review was just my opinion. I read this book seven years ago, when i was 18 years old. I did not like it. I shouldn't have to explain how I wasn't and never have lived any sort of bizarre hipster lifestyle that my most angry messages accuse me of (seriously?) I don't even know what that is supposed to mean. I simply and honestly did not like the book. I did not think it was a relevant book, I thought it was utterly self-involved. I thought the author was playing tricks with language, but unlike a lot of other authors, he was doing it to be showy instead of pursuing where words can go and the impact they can have. I did think they were bubbles, and bubbles may be nice, bubbles can be fun, but bubbles don't last. I just don't think it warrants the place in literature that it currently seems to. I still think Dave Eggers (a person who I've never met and may be absolutely wrong about but who seems to attract the sort of fans who actually write hate mail to people who don't like him) is a man with a superiority complex as seen in much of his writing since then. He doesn't have much sympathy with people who don't live up to his own undefined standards, and he doesn't seem to have much interest in people who aren't like him (see his new film). I still think he's writing for those who are too cool for school and aren't interested in real people, and so I'm not interested in his writings. If you have a problem with this review not being specific enough, let me know and i'll be happy to write you an eight page paper telling you why it's ridiculous for thinking a goodreads review should be the end-all of insights into a book.(less)

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01/15/08

Matt rated it:

recommends it for: wannabe hipsters

as a huge douglas coupland fan, i thought i might enjoy 'a heartbreaking work...' i should've known better. i tried to read 'you shall know our velocity' last year and found it entirely unreadable. i gave up after 200 pages of nonsense. several friends raved about 'ahwoasg,' so i thought, 'ok, i'll give eggars another try.' again, i was horribly disappointed.

the pros: yes, it's funny at times and very *honest* (though can we take eggars at his word? never trust an autobiography). i ...more

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09/17/07

Polly rated it:

(review of isbn 0684863472)

bookshelves: top-thirteen

look. it's cool to hate on dave eggers.

it's *so cool* to be post-dave-eggers, and talk about how you didn't really like this book all that much, and it's even cooler to totally hate this book. it's like a coolness interview question. "did you like his book?" "yeah, I really did." "well, we can't be friends with *you*..."

this is just like those hipsters who don't like justin timberlake. fuck you, hipsters. that new album is solid gold....more

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02/08/08

Karina rated it:

bookshelves: memoir-biography

Read in February, 2008

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck. I was reading this book and around page 237 (or was it 327? fuck), I figured it out- he's talking to ME. He wrote this book for me. Dave Eggers looked into the future and saw that I would want to read a self-referential, self-satisfying memoir. He knew that I would be trying to figure stuff, being in my twenties and all, and while not dealing with the enormity of losing both parents and having to rear a young sibling, I would have my own shit to work through. He. fu...more

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08/02/07

Jeff rated it:

recommends it for: People who are nearsighted... I mean metaphorically speaking.

Dave, Dave, Dave, Dave. What can I say? I can sort of remember picking up this book in a bookstore somewhere and reading the first few pages… now, not the first few pages of the story, but I’m talking about the copyright page. Freaking Dave Eggers is writing his novel starting with the copyright page? Wild man, wild man!
So, I read it. I liked it. It was this nonstop stream of consciousness kind of thing, which I found a bit comforting, cause that’s how I think. I mean, of co...more Dave, Dave, Dave, Dave. What can I say? I can sort of remember picking up this book in a bookstore somewhere and reading the first few pages… now, not the first few pages of the story, but I’m talking about the copyright page. Freaking Dave Eggers is writing his novel starting with the copyright page? Wild man, wild man!
So, I read it. I liked it. It was this nonstop stream of consciousness kind of thing, which I found a bit comforting, cause that’s how I think. I mean, of course that’s how I think, cause my mind will just sometimes ramble on and on and on about nothing in particular. It could be about donuts that my mind is thinking about, it could be about women. Maybe it’s about basketball. I miss Michael Jordan. 1992 was the year they first made the Dream Team for the U.S. Basketball Olympic team. Do you remember all 12 members? I do. Swear to God I’m not looking this up: Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, John Stockton, Karl Malone, Charles Barkley, David Robinson, Clyde Drexler, Chris Mullins, Patrick Ewing, and the one college player Duke’s very own Christian Lattner (I don’t know how to spell his name… okay, I looked it up- it’s Laettner) And really what ever happened to that guy? How did he get on the dream team? One shot? He hit the winning shot in an NCAA basketball tournament. That’s it. That’s all he ever did. Shaq O’neill was waiting in the wings. Hell Isaiah Thomas could have been that last player, but apparently Michael Jordan didn’t want Isaiah on the team. Who knows if that rumor is true? Certainly not me.
Anyway, a friend of mine read the book and she didn’t like it so much. Which almost made me question how I felt about the book, but then I thought, “No, stay with your belief system man! Don’t let someone else’s opinion sway you.” But that did get me to thinking if there were books that men preferred over women, and vice versa. I don’t mean sexist misogynistic type books, but I’m talking the writing style specifically. Is there a cadence to writing that men prefer? Is there a cadence that women prefer? Maybe someone should write a thesis about that. I know it’s not going to be me. I didn’t major in psychology, though looking back I wish I would have because there were so many cute girls in the psychology department.
In conclusion, I enjoyed this book.
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03/21/08

Bryon rated it:

Read in August, 2005

recommends it for: Anyone

I had problems with Dave Eggers for a long time. Having never read a word he'd written, I immaturely thought I had every right to hate him. He was young, successful, and adored by critics. That was enough right there. When it first came out, I would see AHWOSG in the bookstore and grimace at it (more than once, I even gave it the evil eye). My loathing was out of sheer jealousy. I recognized it as such back then, but still carried on. It's hard to let go of things sometimes.

OK. Fast ...more I had problems with Dave Eggers for a long time. Having never read a word he'd written, I immaturely thought I had every right to hate him. He was young, successful, and adored by critics. That was enough right there. When it first came out, I would see AHWOSG in the bookstore and grimace at it (more than once, I even gave it the evil eye). My loathing was out of sheer jealousy. I recognized it as such back then, but still carried on. It's hard to let go of things sometimes.

OK. Fast forward three or four years. I still have a lot of pent up animosity for those writers who are so far ahead of me. However, this fear, thinly cloaked as a juicy eccentricity has dissipated a great deal upon reading Eggers' triumphant, naked, brutally pure and dramatically veracious window into a life bereft of normalcy.

What is normalcy? Nobody knows (and quite frankly, nobody should care), but I'll tell you what it's not: having to deal with the death of both your parents within mere months of each other. That just doesn't happen to people. On the rare and awful occassions when it does, the children involved are devastated. It happened to Eggers and his siblings. When his mother died, he was left to share custody of his younger brother Toph. Still just a child, Toph grew up under the sometimes bizarre, always concerned eye of his older brother Dave.

The center of AHWOSG is truly the great and hilarious relationship Eggers has with Toph. To try to describe how they both grew up together in the strange and bumpy post-parental freedom-for-all (with strict rules of obtaining said freedom) would be detrimental to the experiences you can have in Eggers' world. So we won't venture further. Rest assured, there's a seal-tight bond there, one few can probably relate to.

Smirking just on the borders of the author's fatherly/brotherly/friendly/loving/do-right-for-the-little-jerk attitude is the fully-aware-of-everything-that-is-and-is-not persona that he is constantly invoking and daring to take him just one step further... just to the brink... just to push him off. His emotions are bloody rare, like a T-Bone rippling with E. coli. His running, inner monologue and occasional tabooed thoughts are cut from his heart with a dull spork and served to the reader à la mode--as if the sweet, cold vanilla sub-thought could lighten the mood. It does. And his words never fail to render a heartbreaking, poetic, screaming justice for his soul.

I ate it up. I wanted more. I swallowed my jealousy and loved it.(less)

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02/04/08

Meredith rated it:

recommended to Meredith by: Olga
recommends it for: anyone

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

I LOVED THIS BOOK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Eggers has created something raw, graphic, gritty, something real and it is an emotional sometimes painful read. It is the way in which he deals with grief that appeals to me most. His crazy stream of consciousness writing style is so refreshingly real. At times it seems you are reading his thoughts, unedited. Instead of wallowing in grief for the entire novel he refuses to confront his emotions and whirls around like a frisbee comically avoiding...more I LOVED THIS BOOK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Eggers has created something raw, graphic, gritty, something real and it is an emotional sometimes painful read. It is the way in which he deals with grief that appeals to me most. His crazy stream of consciousness writing style is so refreshingly real. At times it seems you are reading his thoughts, unedited. Instead of wallowing in grief for the entire novel he refuses to confront his emotions and whirls around like a frisbee comically avoiding the world.

What got to me about this book was that while I read about his life after his parents' death, while I laughed at his jokes and listened to his rants, while I tried to make sense of his rambles and his pointless thoughts mentioned it seemed only to avoid thinking of anything important...I could still sense the emotions he was trying to hide.

I myself will grow cynical while saddened. Humor can be a great way to cope with grief. When I lost my grandfather and then was unable to attend his funeral, I cried at first...then I laughed until I was crying again. It all seemed so absurd. That I could get on the plane and yet one small weather issue prevented me from saying goodbye to someone so dear to me...Over the next few days I tried to not think about his death, tried to fill my mind with thoughts about anything else, tried to engage myself in other activities, I laughed, I joked with friends...I didn't want to cope with the grief. I ranted about how much life sucked, or what I saw was wrong with this fucked up world. And then once everyone left me to myself I cried. I broke down and screamed and cursed God and everything around me and cried. Only when I finally dealt with his death and accepted it, did I find some sort of peace. This book for me expressed the same raw emotions.

It is his awareness of how this is destroying him, his acknowledgment of how angry he is with the world around him for giving him a difficult life that makes this book so appealing. He attempts to poke fun at himself to soften the story, to make it less tragic, maybe to make it seem that he has been able to move on...yet at heart this is simply the heartbreaking story of a young man who has lost his parents and is left to raise his brother alone. At the end after all of the glitz, glitter and shall I say clutter he fills the novel with he finally gets down to what he wanted to express all along...

The last several pages of raw emotion tear at you. You see his soul, raw and bleeding. No this isn't a pity me, poor me situation, I believe this is a cry of desperation, a moment of insanity. He has entertained the reader, made a joke even about his situation, presented himself as arrogant and self centered...but I truly believe it was all an act...to protect himself. Because that is what we do as humans, we hide our emotions any way we know how, and we protect ourselves to the best of our ability. It is better to laugh things off than to cry and indicate our weakness and fear of death.

My heart broke for him and upon reading the words finally finally finally after his rant about what he was trying to show us, what he was trying to entertain us with and how he had given everything, I knew it was true.

This book is incredible. Skim over the middle if needed. He clutters it, I think intentionally however. You will laugh, cry and then think why is he rambling about people running nude on a beach...but it is a wonderful novel and well worth the read.

***excuse the length but I cannot express enough how much this book meant to me and touched my life.
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08/14/08

Choupette rated it:

bookshelves: own-or-access

Read in January, 2009

recommended to Choupette by: the world. fuck you, world.

Let's begin with the title: "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius". All that crap in the preface can go to hell; this is the prime theme of the book. Arrogant as all hell? No! Well, yes, but what it's really talking about is the very human desire to find meaning in things that seem too cruel, too illogical, too unfair to have actually happened. We want our suffering to be divinely inspired because then there would be a point to it. Our pain must be beautiful, profound, perfect. In...more

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08/07/07

Clare rated it:

Read in March, 2001

I disliked so very much about this book. The grating self-awareness, the oh-I'm-so-clever stream of consciousness asides, the indescribably tedious discussion of his magazine work. But the heart of the book, the story of Eggers and his young brother trying to be each other's whole family after the death of their parents, is genuinely sad and funny all at once, a difficult feat to accomplish. I wish he'd stuck to telling that story instead of trying so hard to make me think he's a staggering g...more

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10/14/08

Erin added it

omg OMG! which one of you was it?!?!? which one of you snekay little emo kids managed to pull this off!?

you know, wilcan's level 400 creative writing class? last semester of my senior year of college? we had the classroom in Times Hall that didn't get air conditioning! i passed out in the middle of class right before spring break? that one time, when the health center prescribed me the wrong medication for my bronchitis!!!! don't you remember!?

well i do. don't th...more

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09/06/07

Amanda rated it:

Clearly, this is a polarizing book. All I'll add is that the first time I read it, sometime in the middle of college, I had all of the negative reactions I've read here. It was sometimes funny, and sad and beautiful and all that, but mostly it was an autobiography by an asshole who was full of himself and I just didn't see why I should care, why I should keep reading.

And then I read it again a few years later. And I don't really know what happened in between exactly. Maybe I became ...more

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06/23/08

Rebecca rated it:

I've been reading this book for about three months now and I just can't bring myself to finish it (and I only have 17 pages left). This is the first book I've read by Dave Eggers, and I've been told not to judge his other works based on this memoir. Memoirs can be tricky beasts after all.

In the beginning I really enjoyed this book. Eggers actually did have an interesting life and he tells his story in stream-of-consciousness (sp?), which I found to be really interesting...at first. It ...more

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07/31/07

Steve rated it:

Read in October, 2007

Plenty of clever people have written about A.H.W.O.S.G., but Eggers himself may have done it best with the preface, acknowledgements, and even the title of his book. It all portends a memoir that is sad, funny, smart, and honest. He shrewdly pre-empts criticism about his self-obsession by professing to be self-conscious about it – a kind of meta-awareness that’s somehow more appealing. It’s clear before the book begins that he’s got that Gen X hipster axe to wield for sarcastic, irrev...more

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08/08/07

Eric C rated it:

I was sick of Eggers'
self-absorbed schtick after three pages of the preface. But, the cover read
"pulitzer prize finalist" (among other superlatives), so I forged on. I'd made
it to page 33 of the actual text (without laughing once) when I noticed Eggers'
picture on the back cover. He reminded me of some people I'd met when I was
working at a startup company during the early internet boom. They were so full
of themselves with their free-wheeling style...more

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07/05/07

Lorna rated it:

bookshelves: couldn-t-finish

Read in October, 2007

so, i know that this book is supposed to be completely amazing and all (hence the "pulitzer prize finalist" badge on the front, but i hated hated hated it. i really didn't care anything for what was going on with the people or "plot." and the narration was beyond annoying. it's just a bad sign when you get to the last 7 pages of a novel, and decide that you really don't care and just stop reading.

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03/29/09

Kelly rated it:

bookshelves: books-that-never-end, memoirs

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 ( tota...more

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12/28/07

Núria rated it:

bookshelves: 2008, 5-favoritos, literatura-en-ingles, prestados, siglo-xx

Read in January, 2008

recommends it for: huérfanos, fatalistas, autoreflexios patológicos, escritores,

Después de un primer capítulo como el que nos da Dave Eggers en 'Una historia conmovedora, asombrosa y genial' supe que, viniera lo que viniera después, iba a querer con desesperación este libro, aunque después viniera la prosa más infumable que hubiera podido leer en mi vida. Porque el primer capítulo habla de mí, de nosotros. Es lo que había estado esperando leer toda mi vida (o como mínimo desde los 18 años). Nadie antes lo había contado bien. La diferencia es que Eggers es sincer...more Después de un primer capítulo como el que nos da Dave Eggers en 'Una historia conmovedora, asombrosa y genial' supe que, viniera lo que viniera después, iba a querer con desesperación este libro, aunque después viniera la prosa más infumable que hubiera podido leer en mi vida. Porque el primer capítulo habla de mí, de nosotros. Es lo que había estado esperando leer toda mi vida (o como mínimo desde los 18 años). Nadie antes lo había contado bien. La diferencia es que Eggers es sincero. La diferencia es que Eggers me entiende. No se olvida de nada. Incluye la tristeza y el sentido del humor en su justa medida. La resignación y la rabia en su justa proporción. El alivio y la frustración en su justa combinación. Lo que cuenta no sólo es verdad. Es mi verdad. En este primer capítulo Eggers cuenta como su familia se desintegra cuando su madre y su padre mueren de cáncer con sólo unos tres meses de diferencia. Y leerlo fue reconfortante y doloroso a la vez. Y es así como tienen que ser los libros.

Luego viene la parte en que él, con sólo unos veinte años, se tiene que cuidar de su hermano, que aún es sólo un niño pequeño. Pero aún hay otra línea argumental, que es el auge y caída de una revista en la que Eggers participó, 'Might', que pretendía ser la voz de la Generación X. La obra no sigue una narrativa lineal, sino que más bien presenta una serie de escenas/personajes que sirven para dar una visión caleidoscópica. El tema de la muerte de los padres es un tema recurrente, que va apareciendo constantemente, pero sobre todo al final, de modo que acaba siendo una obra circular, que termina retomando el principio.

Se trata de un libro autobiográfico, pero no sabemos hasta qué punto es no-ficción y hasta qué punto es ficción. El mismo libro se dedica a analizar esta cuestión. Y es que es un libro altamente (auto)reflexivo, que constantemente, de forma directa, reflexiona sobre su naturaleza, cita sus temas principales, analiza el significado de sus metáforas y su simbolismo, e incluso reflexiona acerca de estas reflexiones. Lo mismo le pasa al protagonista: es alguien altamente autoreflexivo, que siempre se dedica a analizar y a dotar de significado incluso sus actos más triviales, y después, cómo no, reflexiona acerca de estas reflexiones, analiza por qué siempre tiene esta necesidad de analizarlo absolutamente todo.

Aunque el resto de capítulos no los quiera con desesperación como el primero, los sigo queriendo. Porque es una obra original en su forma, pero nunca deja de preocuparse por el fondo y nunca deja de ser sincera. Antes que nada el libro habla del vampirismo y el exhibicionismo que comporta la escritura. De la necesidad de compartir el dolor, pero a la vez la necesidad de que nos dejen solos con nuestro dolor. Del fatalismo que nos embarga cuando nos ha sucedido una desgracia: si nos ha pasado una vez, nos va a pasar más veces. De la hipocondría, del convencimiento que vamos a morir jóvenes. De vernos empujados a actuar como adultos antes de que nos sintamos preparados. De lo difícil que es combinar las obligaciones familiares con la libertad personal. De huidas hacia delante y autodestrucción. Del miedo que acarrea la responsabilidad (¿y si mi hermano se convierte en un psicópata por mi culpa?) De ser un niñato inmaduro pero creerse alguien extremamente original, irreverente, especial e incomprendido. De arrogancia y sentimiento de culpabilidad. Pero sobre todo habla de como la muerte y la desgracia siempre están a nuestro alrededor y no podemos hacer nada para impedirlas. Y lo mejor es que lo hace todo desde una distancia irónica, pero a la vez des de la sinceridad. Lo mejor es que es divertido, pero a la vez profundo. (less)

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12/16/07

Z rated it:

Read in November, 2001

I remember reading this book in Biology 11 -- either reading it before class started, or having it out on my desk, or something -- and my teacher, who was this sort of delightfully insane man who was retiring at the end of that year and so knew he could get away with anything, and once spent twenty minutes at the start of class telling us about the ABBA cover band he'd been to see last night, and how the music of ABBA uplifted the soul, and so on -- seeing the title and telling me never to be br...more

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06/14/07

Punk rated it:

bookshelves: memoirs, non-fiction

Read in September, 2003

Non-fiction(ish). Dave Eggers' parents are dead, and now he's got to take care of his little brother. This is their sort-of-true story.

Because I'm a geek, Dave Eggers endears himself to me just by his modifications to the verso, which include his placement on a sexual-orientation scale of 1 to 10 and the reminder that the military-industrial-entertainment complex really has little power over us as individuals. The book suffers from all the weaknesses Eggers warns us about in the note...more

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03/21/07

mary rated it:

i never finished this book, and i don't particularly plan to.

i mean sure, it's funny, it's sad, it has its moments. i got involved with the graphic and emotionally staggering descriptions of his parents. and this guy has had a pretty intense life if this is his memoir. recognition must be given for that. fine. but the preface? the rules? dear lord. the last thing i need to read is the self-indulgent self-obsessed tale of a self-centric and self-aggrandizing smart kid. i have enough...more

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"I like the dark part of the night, after midnight and before four-thirty, when it's hollow, when ceilings are harder and farther away. Then I can breathe, and can think while others are sleeping, in a way can stop time, can have it so – this has always been my dream – so that while everyone else is frozen, I can work busily about them, doing whatever it is that needs to be done, like the elves who make the shoes while children sleep." More quotes...