Dave Eggers Throwdown

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I kind of liked how Eggers didn't want his newest book to come out under his own name and made it hard to get when it was released (insuring it wouldn't wind up on the NYT Best Sellers list).

― Aaron W (Aaron W), Wednesday, 29 January 2003 22:43 (twenty-one years ago) link

And whatever you think of Eggers's prose, his 826 Valencia project, which tutors "underprivileged" kids in writing, is a very worthwhile use of his literary lucre.

― JD (JND), Wednesday, 29 January 2003 22:49 (twenty-one years ago) link

Yay for the Edgy Alliance! He's been off the boil recently, but Rosenbaum's doorstop-sized selected articles 'The Secret Parts of Fortune' was the best Xmas present I bought myself in 2002. For a taster try this this or this.

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Wednesday, 29 January 2003 22:51 (twenty-one years ago) link

I bought a copy of "The Secret Parts of Fortune" at Housing Works, and discovered when I came home that it was signed by the great man himself. The article on "Nuke Porn" is especially good. I'm only halfway through it, though.

― JD (JND), Wednesday, 29 January 2003 22:59 (twenty-one years ago) link

Okay, so I liked that "Generation X" book, but couldn't identify with any of the characters (same for most of Coupland's other works, too, though I do like them), and I enjoyed "Heartbreaking Work," but I didn't get all of the pop-culture references, and from the sounds of this new book, I won't identify with it, either. Basically, I seem to have no connection to any of the hip people born around the same time as myself. In fact, I probably identify most with the hippies about 1970. So am I destined toexist only on the fringes of society?

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Wednesday, 29 January 2003 23:42 (twenty-one years ago) link

Well, it's LITERATURE. You don't necessarily have to identify with the writer or protagonist to get anything out of a novel (although sometimes it's nice).

― suzy (suzy), Wednesday, 29 January 2003 23:46 (twenty-one years ago) link

But Aaron, why congratulate Eggers for making a piece of literary fiction unavailable to a public that barely reads literary fiction as it is?

Coupland is significantly older than Eggers, I'd think, though anyone's free to start drawing lines between the two of them and McInerny and others besides: people who get a lucky break of media or resonance around a first novel tend not to fare well, which is funny because so few of the people getting early breaks seem to notice that. Eggers did, and since then we've basically had to watch him cope, very publically, with that fact; I'd have found this interesting if I'd had any sense that he was actually a good writer and not just a guy with good front-matter aesthetics who'd happened to write an interesting one-off novel about some experiences he had. Zadie Smith did well and immediately threw herself into the highbrow, down to a new highbrow look, and I think she's good enough to weather her way through a few potentially rough novels until she's really terrific and taken as seriously as she evidently wants to be.

But the mid-list bruiser showing off tatoos in a big for more press ...

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 30 January 2003 00:01 (twenty-one years ago) link

Sorry, "big" = "bid" and the Eggers was not a novel but a bit of memoir, though it functioned a bit as both.

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 30 January 2003 00:03 (twenty-one years ago) link

suzy, it wasn't so much that I didn't identify with the characters as that I didn't identify with anything in the books - and didn't get the references, either (which was more disturbing than not getting the characters thing). Made me feel a bit distanced from my peers, if the books were supposed to be accurate representatives of those of my own age.

― I'm Passing Open Windows (Ms Laura), Thursday, 30 January 2003 00:17 (twenty-one years ago) link

he’s a recovering crackhead, glue-sniffer, gas-huffer and alcoholic whose forthcoming memoir begins with the writer having fallen, well, flat on his fucking face—in this case, off a fire escape. After a two-week crack bender (the culmination of a three-year addiction), Mr. Frey is scraped off the pavement by some friends and sent by plane to his clueless parents, who then deliver the ravaged carcass of their son to the famous Minnesota rehab clinic, Hazelden.

National Enquirer top shelf material *yawn*

― brg30 (brg30), Thursday, 30 January 2003 00:33 (twenty-one years ago) link

I liked AHBWOSG quite a lot (second half got boring though), but, like Martin, I'm out of the loop and out of America enough to have just picked it up on spec without any attendant hype. I know almost nothing about Eggers apart from what was contained in that book. My mate James picked up his journal thing (McSweeney's?) when he was in the US in 2001, and I had a look and thought it was indulgent shite.

― Nick Southall (Nick Southall), Thursday, 30 January 2003 08:42 (twenty-one years ago) link

RR != good. (Hey Jerry!)

― Mary (Mary), Thursday, 30 January 2003 09:55 (twenty-one years ago) link

I've never even seen a McSweeney's, personally.

Nabisco and I are not going to agree here: as well as liking Eggers, I found White Teeth unreadable. I got sick of having to reread sentences and having to recast them in my mind into something that made sense and flowed, so stopped after 30-50 pages. I don't give up on books often, and it was lent to me by my girlfriend at the time, which was another reason to finish it.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Thursday, 30 January 2003 13:47 (twenty-one years ago) link

Did anyone else read the newer Eggers, "You Shall Know Our Velocity"? I thought it was lame-o. He should stick to semiautobiography.

― Nick A. (Nick A.), Thursday, 30 January 2003 14:50 (twenty-one years ago) link

The first few McSweeneys were quite good, actually; his whole front-matter wankery was still pretty amusing at that point, he ran what's still my favorite George Saunders piece, he had Haruki Murakami and possible pseudonymous David Foster Wallace, and whatshisface's histories of failed revolutionary ideas.

I don't dislike Eggers! Heartbreaking etc. was a good read and worthwhile. But judging by the new one and the general Eggers history since the beginning, I don't think he's a particularly good writer -- in fact, from what I can tell, he's figured that out too, and is focusing on what he's good at: being a literary figure and public persona.

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 30 January 2003 15:51 (twenty-one years ago) link

A page a day. Anything less is unacceptable you punk-ass-bitch-motherfucker. Anything less is unacceptable.

nitsuh writes 25 pages a day in his sleep you punk-ass bitch motherfucker!

anyway - are we absolutely sure this isn't an onion-style parody? if mcsweeney's was half as satirical and on-point as it once was they would've created this guy

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Thursday, 30 January 2003 16:24 (twenty-one years ago) link

six years pass...

http://timetoreadsomeeggers.ytmnd.com/

― fuck you chelios (jeff), Saturday, 25 April 2009 02:54 (fifteen years ago) link

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