22 year-olds should never be allowed to publish
I finally read AHWOSG after hearing raves about it for many years. I was very disappointed. The first 75 pages or so about the parents' deaths was very engaging and gave me false hopes. The remainder of the book was tedious, pretentious and incredibly boring. The author seems to write as if he was a 22 year-old, the age of the character. I guess Eggers doesn't know that an actual writer can write in the guise of a younger character without losing his skills such as grammar, punctuation, no run-on sentences. 99% of 22 year-olds do not have enough life experience to be interesting for 400 pages. An editor would have been helpful. At least 100 pages should be deleted especially the long section on the MTV interview -- I had to skip over most of it because it was so horrible. Unfortunately, my opinion is very late for most readers. Maybe if Eggers ever decides to reprint this memoir, he could do so as a 200 (or less) page novella. What a shame to have wasted $10,000 on a useless 'zine rather than on something like .....oh I don't know.....child care!

Horrid
This book is so unimaginably bad that the only way its title's words have any relevance is if they are applied to negatives. Fortunately, I borrowed the book from my mother-in-law and did not help enrich this pr-drenched hack. Genius fails both of my factors for memoir excellence by a ton. His life, if truly represented in the memoir, is dull, self-pitying, and self-aggrandizing. His is the archetypal life of `quiet desperation' gone Madison Avenue. In short, his life is neither interesting nor important. Worse, though, is that he is not even a passable prosist. And it's not because he's stretching forms, nor anything near-Joycean, it's that he simply cannot write a compelling sentence, much less a compelling narrative. I am not a believer in Chicken Littleism, that all was better yester, for things go in cycles, but Genius is a book that is horrendous writing in any day. Even 20 years ago it would have been laughed at by any publisher. Before I detail its execrability, let me opine on the reasons it became a bestseller. Genius comes after a couple of decades of MTV, computer games, porno on command, and Political Correctness. I.e.- the self and its instant gratification is the leading mover of advertising, politics, and now art. Eggers may be a genius, but its not in literature, but in marketing. His book is the literary equivalent of the pet rock of the 1970s.

I defy any reader of Genius to be able to point to a single well-crafted description, or a memorable scene. There are none. Is there even a well-written or memorable paragraph or sentence? 0 for 2. Eggers even celebrates his illiteracy with a near 50 page prologue that is meant as meta-humor, but is really just piffle, for it is not deep, not insightful, nor even original. Its real reason is to try to distract the reader from expecting that Eggers can actually write. This is the same ill that afflicts the work of Jackson Pollock- had he limited his drippings to a series of, say, 8-12 paintings one might legitimately scan the corpus for meaning. But to make a career out of dripping manifests the fact that the man did not really have a coherent, nor deep, vision. Had Eggers limited his wisecracking to 2- 3 pages tops, he may have been falsely accused of having a sense of humor. The bloat that was printed is merely the equivalent of a liar needing to constantly elaborate on his lies just so the prescients among us don't suspect. Of course, we do, and the best of us know a put-on when we read it. Yet, Eggers thinks that if he pretends his prose's lack of craft is a choice, then its failings are good, because for someone to write that badly and get published must mean there is a deeper meaning within. Hold on, reader, let me get that full guffaw out of the way....There. For years, at the Uptown Poetry Group, I would have to explain to young teenagers who thought that their poorly constructed and dull rants of how dull it was to write poorly constructed and dull rants about being bored in a café were not genius, nor even insightful. They were most floored when I told them that such rants were not even original. Eggers' masturbation is what it is- masturbation alone. In short, a writer cannot effectively illustrate his character is bored by writing boringly. Some of the dullest characters in literary history were the fops whose lives were penned by Oscar Wilde- `nuff said.

On to the book's tale: the first 30 or so pages follow his mother's death by cancer. She pukes, she excretes, she spits, and this is supposed to invoke sympathy as Eggers describes how wretched his dying mother is. Then, before she finally kicks off (at which point the reader is delighted) his dad drops dead. Dozens of pages in and this is all that has happened, save for some banal conversation, and finding out he comes from an upper middle class, if not wealthy, family. Eggers has an absolutely tin ear for conversation- both in its content and in its utterance, plus he has no idea how conversation serves narrative- to push it along. I.e.- conversation is usually only superior to narration if it can capture the specifics, emotional intensity, or the essence of the moment or narrative better than a narration could. Also, conversation has to be interesting enough to stand on its own. Real banal banter is not good writing. Good conversation is written to be read and reread with appreciation, yet to fool the reader into believing someone might actually be profound enough to say what they say, even if unwittingly.

Example A of Eggers' tin ear for conversation: (from pages 22-23)

`Hi,' I say.

`Hi,' Toph says.

`How's it going?'

`Fine.'

`Are you still hungry?'

`What?'

`Are you still hungry?'

`What?'

`Pause the stupid game.'

`Okay.'

`Can you hear me?'

`Yes.'

`Are you listening?'

`Yes.'

`Do you still want food?'

`Yeah.'

Now, I've taken a snip from a longer exchange, but this is typical of the conversation, one designed to show the relationship of Eggers to his baby brother Christopher (Toph). About 40% of the book is literally devoted to conversations of this depth. The fact is that most vapid people are vaguely aware of their state, and reveal the depths of their vapidity by trying to cover it up with poorly advised forays into bad philosophy or polysyllabicism. Eggers is not even clued in enough to recognize this point....Even worse than the tin-eared conversations is the utterly Dick & Jane-like A to B to C narrative. There is nary a moment of true reflection in the whole book. Whether this is because Eggers is simply vapid, or thinks his readers are is not important- the vapidity is. Instead, the whole book, especially the first third is nothing but self-referential pap- be it in advertisements of brand name products (the film version will score a coup in product placements), mention of rock groups, computer games, tv shows and characters, and pop arcana that only a decade on is already as dated as the courtly intrigues of John Dryden's poetry.

What Eggers and his admirers believe to be in the vein of Joyce and Woolf is nothing better than the PC MFA workshopped drivel it sneers at. In fact, it's probably worse because an occasional moment of sincerity might lend an oasised sentence or paragraph of sustained clarity in the midst of those deserts. Genius is merely PC workshop smart aleck writing that thinks it's brilliant for its un-wry comments on things that have no staying power to begin with.

Emotionally evocative, but wordy
I bought this book because of all the rave reviews from critics and the because it was a Pulitzer finalist. I read the first one-third of the story and really enjoyed his candid writing style. I am from the Bay Area and too lost my mother at an early age, so I really related to both his accounts of Berkeley/SF life and people, as well as grieving the loss of a parent at a young age. His anger toward the insensitivity of others was frank. His urgency to protect his little brother from the realities of death and loss are memorable. His writing style is both vivid and candid, however very very detailed. At first this was interesting and kept my attention, but after the first 5 chapters or so, was a slow moving book. I found myself skipping chapters. Overall a decent read though.

Hyperboles Aside; Read It and See...
"Well they say its kind of frightening how this younger generation swings, You know its more than just some new sensation... At an early age he hits the streets, wind up tied with who he meets / You know its more than just an aggravation." --David Lee Roth, from Van Halen's "The Cradle Will Rock," from their seminal 1980 work "Women and Children First"

So it may be a little ridiculous starting off a literary review with some credible quasi-fiction book like Eggers, "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius," (heretoforeafter referred to as AHWOSG) but there is something in it that is pertinent, something I believe Eggers with his way of writing what is available to his mind at the moment, though seemingly irrelevant, would approve of. So to title your debut book, AHWOSG, borders on the absurd side of hyperboles, in the end when one is finished reading, this almost can't put down work...is not a far-off description. It's that good my friends, read on and you may be convinced.

So back to David Lee Roth waxing poetic and philosophical, which are two descriptors rarely associated with the lyrical works of Van Halen, Roth years. What AHWOSG does, less concisely mind you, is capture a voice of a generation. The book does a lot of things, but this summing up of the Gen Y, the Internet Generation, or better yet, The YouTube Generation's media savvy need for an audience on a broad scale seems to be something Eggers does most successfully, Is it a generational treatise? Perhaps not quite that, because after all, can you capture in a work of literature all the voices, feelings, experiences of a whole generation. Probably not. But as Eggers proves, you can come pretty darn close.

Just get a gander at this writing, before you go on to purchase this book (or however in your corner of the world you acquire fiction to consume), "What does it take to show you mf's, what does it freakin' take what do you want how much do you want because I am willing and I'll stand before you and I'll raise my arms and give you my chest and throat and wait, and I've been so old for so long, for you, for you, I want it fast and right through me---- Oh do it, do it, you mf's, do it do it you f's finally, finally, finally." That's the last passage from AHWOSG and it caps off a really really moving read. Those are the words from an author that really really craves an audience. And so it may be with a generation brought up on an expectation that it just isn't the "15 minutes of fame," we are all seeking and due...but the way one connects is through mass media. A mass audience validates ones existence or at the very least, helps them deal with any human pain they may be suffering in the present.

Eggers, granted, has a lot of reasons to be experiencing angst. Whereas the Gen X'ers, my generation, are thought of as largely cynical with no clear valid reason to cop that permanent attitude, Egger's generation has plently of reason to be dislocated and distraught, the music of Radiohead only one small cultural influencer, not to mention 9/11, wars, real wars, not some mamby pamby skirmishes in Grenada and The Falklands. This is the generation that could very well go down in history as the Next Great Generation, following in the footsteps of the boomers who saved the world from certain peril during War War II.

What is Eggers' AHWOSG like you may want to know? After all why would you still be reading my random stream-of-consciousness review...still? It's about loss, staggering loss. It's about coming of age prematurely when one's parents pass at age 22, leading to the taking on of guardianship for your younger high school aged brother. It's about the search for meaning in one's life through work, friends and family. It's about life, man, just read it and get back out there living it.

To go on further may dilute any type of message I'm trying to send you with this review. What I'd like to do is just to convince you to read this book. You may in some small way find yourself looking at your own life, in light to Eggers', differently. You may in some larger way get to know and understand a generation, perhaps your own, perhaps someone elses. What you won't get from AHWOSG is boredom. And in a life, the pursuit of entertainment and moreso engagement, seems a worthwhile cause, if only to enlighten and give cause to live. ...mmw

The whole is better than some parts.
The book as a whole is much better than some of the parts. Dave Eggers has written a raw, emotional memoir of the years immediately following the death of both parents. He becomes the guardian of a younger brother and is also trying to begin his own career as a writer. Eggers is witty, sarcastic, pretenious and possibly genius, but this book was not easy for me to read. Some parts were laugh out loud funny. Some were gut-wrenchingly brutal. Some were loving, poignant and sad. Then, there were parts that I felt I would never get through and it wasn't until I was finished that I really appreciated what Eggers had accomplished. Several times in telling his story, Eggers goes off on narrative tangents that don't really move the story. These border on stream of conscienciousness, but are just hard to follow, as are some sections of dialogue. (I was torn between 3 or 4 stars, because it was just hard to get through at times.)

So why does this book have such high praise? Eggers is funny and honest. This memoir succeeds in giving an clear picture of one young adult's life and his thoughts as he strives to deal with his grief, become a parent to his much younger brother and carve out a successful career as writer and publisher. Eggers was idealistic enough to think he could do just that. I found myself wanting to like this book because of what Eggers was trying to accomplish.

If you pick up this book and make it through the preface and first chapter (it may not be easy), go ahead and finish. I think you will be glad you did. Then check out Eggers work as a philanthropist and teacher-at-large. Now that deserves high praise indeed!