Rating: 
Summary: As the Title Implies
Review: Dave Eggers has put out a truly great work of art here. The story is very touching as Eggers does a wonderful job of bringing the reader right into the novel with vivid descriptions. At times the novel is profoundly sad. Contrastingly, it is hilarious. Honestly one of the funniest books I have ever read.
Listen, there are many great works of literature in the world, with their themes, symbols, and so on. This has that, but it is also incredibly fun to read. So do it.
Rating:
Summary: Irreverent, disturbing, and excellent
Review: You have to forgive Dave Eggers for the tone of this book. It's terribly irreverent, and probably disturbing to those whose response to death is something like, "she'll always live on in your hearts," or "he's gone to a better place." He's mad, and has a rather sick sense of humor that really only comes with trying to put a bright face on a situation that is never good. But in the midst of his tales of exciting projects and bohemian living, you can sense his pain, and the profound feeling that he's missing something he desperately needs in order to be "like other people." Some of this book may really only hit home with people who've lost parents when they were young. I can see how it might come off as pretentious, self-serving, or narcissistic. It is all of those things. But children who have to become adults without much guidance are often all of those things, in addition to feeling a sense that life has cheated them and owes them something in return. Eggers manages to go through all of this as the story unfolds, sucking the reader into his struggle to become the grownup he very suddenly has to be long before he's ready. This is the book to read when you've stopped being sad. If you're still mourning, it will only disturb you. But if you're feeling cheated, and guilty, and want things to get back to normal, and you're trying to make the best of it, you may see things a little more brightly, and with a little more distance, after reading this book. If none of this applies to you, it's still a good read, so long as you're prepared to deal with some discomfiting reactions to death. It's a touching story of a family trying to keep some semblance of normalcy when their lives have been torn apart.
Rating: 
Summary: An Indirect Review
Review: I finished this book last night, and I'm still working out exactly what I think of it. I can say that I really enjoyed reading it, it turned pages for me, for a start. I can say that, as announced early in the book itself, it does fall apart narrative-wise towards the end, and it's obvious that the experiments in structure (what with whole chapters conducted in interview format) are as much a way of avoiding plot construction and gaining leverage for unrelated anecdotes as they are displays of experimental bravado. What's really phenomenal about the book is the way Eggers sustains the intricate spirals of self-consciousness in which he incessantly whirls -- Is what I am doing beautiful, sublime? Or is it ugly? Can something be beautiful and ugly at the same time? Can I be creating something beautiful if I am conscious of this fact? And on, and on. It's this facet of the work, as much as the verbose, winding sentences, that reminded me so much of David Foster Wallace (who by the way, contributes a long back-cover blurb). Eggers, in fact, is the writer I've read who comes closest to Foster Wallace in voice, which is why it becomes very interesting whether he will be as adept at pure fiction (this first work is a kind of quasi-fictional memoir). You know, stepping away from the book a little, is this kind of fiction, the endlessly self-examing that goes on in it, the continual irony and meta-irony, something that has mass appeal right now (Eggers and Foster Wallace are both best-sellers; they're not Stephen Kings, but most serious writers would be very happy with the kind of circulation their books enjoy) because: a) They are uncovering universal human truths about our self-tormenting psyches; or
b) They are uncovering truths about self-tormenting white middle-class folk, such as, they become novelists, such as, they ask these very questions, such as, their lists cannot become lists without self-reflecting on themselves, self-destructing. There are, in the course of the book, several very short pleas by Eggers ("My heart is pure", "I am an orphan of America", "Reward me for my suffering") that emerge out of context, and the person with whom he is conversing in the book says excuse me? and Eggers says nevermind, and it is clear that the real target of the pleas is the reader, that these pleas are trying to escape out of the book as the core message, and it is these few short sentences, scattered sparsely through the middle of the work, that really confirmed it as a great piece of writing, for me. This tension, between the inner spirals, and the desire to connect with others (the lattice, Eggers calls the social fabric) is one of the most prominent in these kind of works. Which is why, in spite of everything, Eggers and Foster Wallace come out as humans, not some kind of postmodern monsters (which they are often taken to be by their critics).
Rating:
Summary: good, but a bit self-indulgent
Review: i enjoyed the book, but enough is enough.
Rating:
Summary: Obscuring conventions has never been so much fun
Review: Do you get tired of every fly-by-night hack with a cheesey idea trying to pass himself off as 'post modern'? I know I do! That's why I turned to the new Dave Eggers home Post Modernism kit called AHBWOSG. In this book you will learn how to painfully dredge up true details from the hardest moments of your life, disect them, deconstruct them, mock them and finally implicate yourself in the down fall of the human race. Doesn't that sound like fun? No? Well then just take my word for it. When it comes to dealing with death, life and pop culture leave it to Dave Eggers to help you find hope in the hopelessness. Dave has managed to create something that goes beyond the recent Creative Non-Fiction movement and instead delivers a book that not only embodies but surpasses its hyper ironic title. It makes me want to go play frisbee.
Rating:
Summary: staggeringly heartbreaking...
Review: The title of this book is what drew me to it. The writing kept me glued. This book is sad, yet hillarious. Though there's alot of GenX type references, etc... it doesn't slow down the poetic storylines.
Rating: 
Summary: A.H.W.O.S.G. [sic]
Review: So, I finally finished this book, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I've been hauling it around for god knows how long, reading it a page or two at a time, when I feel up to it. Now, I think that I should have an opinion but I don't. I have no opinion. I'm not sorry I read it, I don't think I wasted my time, hell, I'm even glad to check it off the list, happy that now I have read it and know what it's about, yadda yadda yadda. But that's all. It didn't move me, and I don't feel like I've been some how improved by the experience. It was occasionally "laugh out loud funny"[San Francisco Chronicle] but not "utterly unforgettable"[ibid]. I've already forgotten large parts of it, and have only the most superficial memory of the rest. I expect it to be almost entirely forgotten in a month or so, when all I will remember is that indeed, I read that one. It was interestingly written. I think I will remember the style of it, and the I'm-so-hip-20-something tone, and I kind of enjoyed the self-consciousness of it, a mental voice that echoes my own, at times. Now, I'm going to go start Jeanette Winterson's "Art & Lies". She's a pretty dependable author for me, intense and revelatory. I go long periods avoiding her work, then get desperate and scrabble after what I've missed, going on a drunken bender of enthralled admiration.
Rating:
Summary: Unique worldview of the author's life and his generation
Review: He's in his twenties and he has a true story to tell. It's a sad story. And yet sometimes it's incredibly funny. It's a unique worldview of his generation and also of his particular life. First published in 2000, there's a 35-page preface to understanding the book. And later, a 48-page addendum which includes some deleted scenes, some details about how true events were somewhat fictionalized, and an update on the author's life. I read it all. But mainly, it's the 437-page book itself that I found fascinating. Jump inside a young man's mind as his mother lies suffering in the advanced stages of cancer on the living room couch. Experience the excruciating details of her condition. Feel the many emotions as he and his older his sister Beth care for their mother. Beth has taken off a year from law school. Dave has taken off from college. Just five weeks before their father has died, also of cancer. It's been hard on the family for quite a while. Their older brother is off in the big world of career. Their little brother Christopher, whose nickname is Toph, is about 9 or 10 and is in the basement watching television. After their mother dies, Dave becomes his little brother's surrogate parent. But Dave is only 22 at the time and acts like a kid himself. They move to California where they play a lot of Frisbee and live in a rental apartment that is always a mess. Their household might be unconventional, but there's no lack of love and Dave is obsessed with trying to keep everything as normal as possible for his brother. With a few friends, Dave founds a magazine that's supposed to speak for his generation. And much of the book is about this group of friends who try to make a statement about things like consumerism and politics and disaffected youth. There are tragedies among his friends as well as lots of revisiting the details of his parents' deaths. Words spill from this young writer like an open faucet. It's like running a race at a breakneck speed and trying to read it all at once. The writer just picked me up and included me in his world. There I was, racing along with him, totally involved in the details of his life and all his thought processes while somehow living inside his brain for a little while. I couldn't put the book down. And can't quite define its hold on me. I'm not surprised that it has gripped other people too and made a success. Certainly it's not for everyone. But I loved it. Recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Yes
Review: Dave. Yes. Thank you. Raw, unfiltered, bitter, openly narcissistic and hilarious. It's as much a book about Dave as it is about the reader. Insecurities, rage, hopelessness, the point of it all...it's all there. Doesn't feel like a methodical, concise narration, but more of stream-of-consciousness vomiting of bile and bliss-much like life. Hats off to the young Mr. Eggers.
Rating:
Summary: a writer with a genius for self promotion
Review: You've got to give Dave Eggers this, if nothing else, he knows how to market himself. First he wrote this memoir, loaded with irony to appeal to Gen-Xers, continually self-referential to appeal to postmodernists, and centered around his efforts to raise his little brother after their parents both died of cancer, a sure chick magnet. Then, having exposed most of his and his family members' lives to public view (at least in theory) he adopted a Pynchonesque/Sallingeresque reclusive pose, and feigned personal agony at having to discuss the book. All this while cashing in big time on the supposedly "tragic" events of his life. For these savvy ploys alone he deserves to be called a "staggering genius." The book itself uses a host of postmodernist, ironical, satirical, self-conscious, etc., etc., etc...techniques, which are rather hackneyed and, given the ostensible topic of the book (his family tragedy), quite off-putting. At the point where every thought, emotion, and action in your life must be considered for how it will appear in print, you've become a fictional character rather than a real human being. And by creating so much distance between the character of Dave Eggers and the supposedly tragic events of his life, Eggers (the author) makes it really hard for the reader to care much. I finished the book unstaggered and heart unbroken, but grudgingly forced to admit that the literary world has a potential new genius, a writer with a genius for self promotion
|
