Dave Eggers Throwdown

Could someone please tell all of these people that "voice of a generation" awards are not decided upon until you're nearing 60? That anyone making a press-heavy bid during his or her 20s is necessarily disqualified? That this book just sounds like the Eggers one only more unpleasant? That "fiction" as a concept is actually meant to be largely distinct from exaggerated autobiography?

Man, I swear I thought that article had to be some kind of Onion-like parody until I was about half-way through it...

I sure he does.

OH PLEASE no more rich kids with their 'I Went Through Treatment And All I Got Was This Mid-List Book Deal'.

I say this because it's a trend, I've been sent a post-Hazeleden book by someone called Emily Carter, and the publisher's blurb about her mainly says 'EC is the daughter of Anne Roiphe and the sister of Katie Roiphe'.

If I were her and that's all my publisher could think of to tell reviewers etc, HOW fast would I fall off the wagon? Probably why she had to climb on in the first place.

But it turns out whoever wrote this review is just kind of crappy and gives too many stupid details.

I must admit that I agree with this guy on one point - Eggers' book just pissed me off and made me want to write something 'better' (until I realized that nobody who enjoyed that shit to such a high degree would ever like my prose style at all).

That tattoo is the dumbest possible tattoo idea anyone has ever had. Imagine explaining that for the rest of your life.

Trust me, the people dictating literature trends ARE NOT those idiots, they're other idiots.

I'm really looking forward to reading his book on Shakespeare scholarship controversies.

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 ...

National Enquirer top shelf material *yawn*

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.

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.

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

http://timetoreadsomeeggers.ytmnd.com/