A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers

So he’s got one trick where, when the frisbee’s coming, he’ll just lay down on his stomach for as long as he can, and then, at the last possible moment, he’ll stand up and then . . . take a few steps and go catch the Frisbee. That’s it. It’s a pretty stupid f@*$ing trick, right?

This book is cool. Vernacularly speaking, it’s quite hip and Dave seems like a pretty cool guy. But think his memoir of sorts comes up short, way short. I like how he doesn’t try to start at the first of his life and bore us with all that David Copperfield crap (Can a brother get an amen for that Holden Caulfield reference?), so I have no problem with him just throwing us in the middle of something. That something was the death of his parents as he described how they, the mother slowly and the father unexpectedly, came to the end. Dave’s (I honestly think he’d prefer I use his first name) life changes as he now, while still in college, decides to raise his 10-year-old brother basically on his own, with some help from his sister. That’s more or less the plot. Of course there are still other sideline happenings such as his work with Might magazine and his tryout for The Real World, the boring transcript of which is almost exactly 1/8th of the 400+ page book.

First of all, there is definite talent in this writing and really the only thing keeping all else afloat at times. But through these anecdotes, I kept asking myself, What’s the point? And this usually means that what’s happening is not entertaining or the person is not interesting enough. This is a problem! I like how he doesn’t try to fill in all the blanks in this memoir by trying to connect each event to the next to make it all linear, but, ironically, the events just aren’t that great themselves. Most of them entail a situation where Dave panics a little bit in a funny way—usually by going, “Oh, f$%*. God. Jesus Christ.” He’s never serious and always reveals the humorous side but I’m guessing most people found this funnier than I did. It was funny at times but, let’s be real, Maddox of thebestpageintheuniverse.com is much better at meandering.

I bet if you’ve read this that you don’t remember any of the characters’ names because there not developed all that well. There are lots of death related situations—friend on the verge of suicide, friend put in a coma, and another actually dies, I forget how—which is all good and fine to write about but at least make us care about that person so we can care about whether they live or not. I dunno. Dave the character is likeable, and Dave the writer is good and kinda funny—I like the quote I inserted—but there wasn’t much happening for me in this book. I thought the ending was pretty brilliant but it really only amounted to hanging a pretty picture in an empty room.