PatA Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius
March 3rd 2008 11:52
In a previous post I said that I was going to write a scathing review of this book without any consideration of its merit. I like to think that I've matured since making that comment. I've gone through a number of trials, tribulations, etc, and I'm a new man with a (somewhat) positive outlook towards Dave Eggers. He's ok (that's as positive as it gets unfortunately).
This book is essentially an autobiography covering the author's formative years and focussing on the period in his life when he claimed to be a struggling writer despite making a buck out of the writing game (which in the grand scheme of things is pretty damn successful for a writer - this blog has earnt me a grand total of $0.30 at the time of publication of this post).
The best and worst things about this book result from Eggers' intelligence and tendency to overthink everything.
As a result, the book is at times a delightful and smoothly flowing memoir of his frenetic twenties which is effortlessly effective in the way in which it draws the reader into the joys and tragedies of his life. However, the negative side of his over-active intelligence is the frequent complex and painfully self-conscious analysis of every second word that he writes.
Eggers is plainly an obscenely talented writer (this hurts me, this comment right here, hurts a lot, the pain is tremendous), but the emotional difficulties which he confronted when writing this book, with the death of his mother looming above all else as the most important of these moments, cause him to constantly review his words and then review his review in an almost paranoid and sometimes frenzied manner.
The self-criticisms are often valid and at times almost brutally honest about the shortcomings in his own writing (which makes the whole affair very hard to criticise, because he's already beaten me to the punch), but the book is at its best when he loses the self-conscious approach and simply lets the story flow, such as ongoing description of the beautiful relationship he shares with his brother, who he cares for after the death of his parents (I realise this is irrefutable evidence for me being a complete pussy but unfortunately for my tough-guy internet image, it's the best part of the book and I can't avoid admitting this).
I would be stunned to find out that Eggers isn't completely aware of how often his book descends into the mundanity of his overthinking (because he has literally considered every possible angle in which the book could be interpreted), and in that context, it's almost an inevitable conclusion that the difficult to read portions of the book are deliberately so in an attempt to drag the reader into his mindset of confusion, despair and self-doubt, particularly when the author describes the circumstances where he deals with tragedy.
This often becomes an uncomfortable reading experience - particularly during his description of the last period of his mother's life, but the effect is dramatic when the author then allows you to be caught up in the care-free and passionate side of his existence by letting his style shift to his more straightforward and simple voice.
Overall, there was a lot of the time spent reading this book where I didn't enjoy it at all. The opening made for very uncomfortable reading before the story proper picks up. The middle of the book gets horribly bogged down in complex gimmicky writing ('this is a stapler' - I could wring your neck Dave) as Eggers tells us about himself in an extremely over-detailed manner (which seems to be an exercise in therapeutic writing, but it doesn't exactly make for a thrilling read at time). The ending is a mess of storylines coming together without any real resolution, but by this point, I had finally been worn down by the honesty and transparency of the whole exercise and became able to overlook the gimmicks which annoyed me previously and managed to allow myself to be caught up in the sometimes manic story-telling. I am giving the author the benefit of the doubt and assume that this rollercoaster of annoyance was deliberately planned.
As a result I've been convinced (in a very complicated fashion) that this book rules.
Executive Summary: I hate Eggers because I wish I thought of all these gimmicks first, but he seems like a good egg (ha ha, this poor joke has been inserted into the very first draft of this review [since when do I do drafts?!] and it is definitely going to stay in the final version as a pathetic monument to my inescapable immaturity).
Please tell me whether doing a draft (only one) for this review made it any more readable. Personally, I am hoping that it made it worse so I've got an excuse to put in less effort. I still didn't proof-read it properly, which makes the concept of a draft pretty pointless really.
Edit: Ok, I just proof-read this somewhat and boy did it suck so if it still sucks then just be grateful that I improved it just a little bit!
This book is essentially an autobiography covering the author's formative years and focussing on the period in his life when he claimed to be a struggling writer despite making a buck out of the writing game (which in the grand scheme of things is pretty damn successful for a writer - this blog has earnt me a grand total of $0.30 at the time of publication of this post).
The best and worst things about this book result from Eggers' intelligence and tendency to overthink everything.
As a result, the book is at times a delightful and smoothly flowing memoir of his frenetic twenties which is effortlessly effective in the way in which it draws the reader into the joys and tragedies of his life. However, the negative side of his over-active intelligence is the frequent complex and painfully self-conscious analysis of every second word that he writes.
Eggers is plainly an obscenely talented writer (this hurts me, this comment right here, hurts a lot, the pain is tremendous), but the emotional difficulties which he confronted when writing this book, with the death of his mother looming above all else as the most important of these moments, cause him to constantly review his words and then review his review in an almost paranoid and sometimes frenzied manner.
The self-criticisms are often valid and at times almost brutally honest about the shortcomings in his own writing (which makes the whole affair very hard to criticise, because he's already beaten me to the punch), but the book is at its best when he loses the self-conscious approach and simply lets the story flow, such as ongoing description of the beautiful relationship he shares with his brother, who he cares for after the death of his parents (I realise this is irrefutable evidence for me being a complete pussy but unfortunately for my tough-guy internet image, it's the best part of the book and I can't avoid admitting this).
I would be stunned to find out that Eggers isn't completely aware of how often his book descends into the mundanity of his overthinking (because he has literally considered every possible angle in which the book could be interpreted), and in that context, it's almost an inevitable conclusion that the difficult to read portions of the book are deliberately so in an attempt to drag the reader into his mindset of confusion, despair and self-doubt, particularly when the author describes the circumstances where he deals with tragedy.
This often becomes an uncomfortable reading experience - particularly during his description of the last period of his mother's life, but the effect is dramatic when the author then allows you to be caught up in the care-free and passionate side of his existence by letting his style shift to his more straightforward and simple voice.
Overall, there was a lot of the time spent reading this book where I didn't enjoy it at all. The opening made for very uncomfortable reading before the story proper picks up. The middle of the book gets horribly bogged down in complex gimmicky writing ('this is a stapler' - I could wring your neck Dave) as Eggers tells us about himself in an extremely over-detailed manner (which seems to be an exercise in therapeutic writing, but it doesn't exactly make for a thrilling read at time). The ending is a mess of storylines coming together without any real resolution, but by this point, I had finally been worn down by the honesty and transparency of the whole exercise and became able to overlook the gimmicks which annoyed me previously and managed to allow myself to be caught up in the sometimes manic story-telling. I am giving the author the benefit of the doubt and assume that this rollercoaster of annoyance was deliberately planned.
As a result I've been convinced (in a very complicated fashion) that this book rules.
Executive Summary: I hate Eggers because I wish I thought of all these gimmicks first, but he seems like a good egg (ha ha, this poor joke has been inserted into the very first draft of this review [since when do I do drafts?!] and it is definitely going to stay in the final version as a pathetic monument to my inescapable immaturity).
Please tell me whether doing a draft (only one) for this review made it any more readable. Personally, I am hoping that it made it worse so I've got an excuse to put in less effort. I still didn't proof-read it properly, which makes the concept of a draft pretty pointless really.
Edit: Ok, I just proof-read this somewhat and boy did it suck so if it still sucks then just be grateful that I improved it just a little bit!
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When you see really long novels, how many of them actually deserve to be that long?