A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

A National Bestseller today, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers.  I read one of Eggers other books, What is the What, which I enjoyed.  AHWSG, as the author refers to it, is a TRUE story told through the author’s words, his life.  A sad story of two parents dying within 5 months of each other and the aftermath where Eggers himself raises, with some help from his sister Beth, his younger 8 year old brother, Toph (short for Christopher).  Eggers tells the story with brilliant color and description, choosing exactly the parts of the life that illustrate the difficulty that he had raising his brother, after finishing college.  He paints a picture of the “other” American family that we don’t always read about or see in the front of our media dominated culture.  Eggers struggles to provide his brother with a ‘normal’ upbringing by joining Little League, participating in after school play dates, and at the same time trying to maintain his own healthy 24 year old libido by dating, etc.  The journey takes the two from Chicago, then to Berkeley, San Francisco, and at the end of the book we learn they are off to NYC.  It is the second book in a few days that refer to MTV’s the Real World, how weird is that.  Eggers actually was a finalist for the Real World: San Francisco.  Judd gets his part instead, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Real_World:_San_Francisco, where he wanted to be the “tragic story guy.”  Oh well.  He did get to interview Judd and Puck because the MTV producer really liked him.  Eggers at the time attempted to make his magazine, MIGHT, which had a double meaning, I’ll leave that for you to get the meanings.  Pulling the hoax of Adam Rich’s death, which received some PR during the late 1990s, was one of the funnier things the group did.  The “memoir” of Eggers is truly a 1990s read for the twenty-somethings of the day.  The story was riveting and one certainly had their heart poured out for Eggers.  I would say the title gave me a sense of something bigger than what I experienced.  This is clearly the down and out American who wants to leave their mark on the world through laughter, excellent use of language, and using the media to their advantage.  MTV is clearly embedded in almost every 25-45 year old out there, and this is further proof.  Short, choppy story with flash backs and uncertainty of the next stop on the journey.  A good read, but not to the hype I had heard.