Work, Genius, Heartbreaking, Staggering

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

• ISBN13: 9780375725784
• Condition: New
• Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed

National Bestseller 

The literary sensation of the year, a book that redefines both family and narrative for the twenty-first century.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

is the moving memoir of a college senior who, in the space of five weeks, loses both of his parents to cancer and inherits his eight-year-old brother. Here is an exhilarating debut that manages to be simultaneously hilarious and wildly inventive as well as a deeply heartfelt story of the love that holds a family together.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is an instant classic that will be read in paperback for decades to come. The Vintage edition includes a new appendix by the author.Dave Eggers is a terrifically talented writer; don't hold his cleverness against him. What to make of a book called A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: Based on a True Story? For starters, there's a good bit of staggering genius before you even get to the true story, including a preface, a list of "Rules and Suggestions for Enjoyment of This Book," and a 20-page acknowledgements section complete with special mail-in offer, flow chart of the book's themes, and a lovely pen-and-ink drawing of a stapler (helpfully labeled "Here is a drawing of a stapler:").

But on to the true story. At the age of 22, Eggers became both an orphan and a "single mother" when his parents died within five months of one another of unrelated cancers. In the ensuing sibling division of labor, Dave is appointed unofficial guardian of his 8-year-old brother, Christopher. The two live together in semi-squalor, decaying food and sports equipment scattered about, while Eggers worries obsessively about child-welfare authorities, molesting babysitters, and his own health. His child-rearing strategy swings between making his brother's upbringing manically fun and performing bizarre developmental experiments on him. (Case in point: his idea of suitable bedtime reading is John Hersey's Hiroshima.)

The book is also, perhaps less successfully, about being young and hip and out to conquer the world (in an ironic, media-savvy, Gen-X way, naturally). In the early '90s, Eggers was one of the founders of the very funny Might Magazine, and he spends a fair amount of time here on Might, the hipster culture of San Francisco's South Park, and his own efforts to get on to MTV's Real World. This sort of thing doesn't age very well--but then, Eggers knows that. There's no criticism you can come up with that he hasn't put into A.H.W.O.S.G. already. "The book thereafter is kind of uneven," he tells us regarding the contents after page 109, and while that's true, it's still uneven in a way that is funny and heartfelt and interesting.

All this self-consciousness could have become unbearably arch. It's a testament to Eggers's skill as a writer--and to the heartbreaking particulars of his story--that it doesn't. Currently the editor of the footnote-and-marginalia-intensive journal McSweeney's (the last issue featured an entire story by David Foster Wallace printed tinily on its spine), Eggers comes from the most media-saturated generation in history--so much so that he can't feel an emotion without the sense that it's already been felt for him. What may seem like postmodern noodling is really just Eggers writing about pain in the only honest way available to him. Oddly enough, the effect is one of complete sincerity, and--especially in its concluding pages--this memoir as metafiction is affecting beyond all rational explanation. --Mary Park







Rating: (out of 949 reviews)







List Price: $ 15.00



Price: $ 4.99

Other posts like this, by keyword:

Work:

What We Know about Emotional Intelligence: How It Affects Learning, Work, Relationships, and Our Mental Health ...
How To Live and Work in the UK: The Essential Guide to UK Immigration, the Points Based System and Life in the UK (Live & Work in) ...
Single mom, should I stay home, start a home business, or go to work? ...
The Artist at Work: On the Working Methods of William Coldstream and Michael Andrews ...
I Got Scammed So You Don’t Have To!: How to Find Legitimate Work at Home and Random Jobs in a Scamming Economy Reviews ...
Be Your Own Best Publicist: How to Use PR Techniques to Get Noticed, Hired, and Rewarded at Work ...
“The future of a child is the work of the mother “. Mothers educators without any specific studies ? ...
Making Schools Work : A Revolutionary Plan to Get Your Children the Education They Need ...
thirtysomething: Television, Women, Men, and Work (Critical Studies in Television) Reviews ...
Independent filmmakers to screen work in Savannah ...
Genius:

Electronic Games for the Evil Genius: 21 Do-It-Yourself Entertaining Projects ...
Electronic Games for the Evil Genius: 21 Do-It-Yourself Entertaining Projects ...
Is Your Genius at Work?: 4 Key Questions to Ask Before Your Next Career Move ...
General Douglas MacArthur, military genius (Men of achievement series) ...
Jeff Bezos: Business Genius of Amazon.Com (Internet Biographies) ...
The Genius of the Place: The English Landscape Garden, 1620-1820 Reviews ...
Fire and Knowledge: Fiction and Essays Reviews ...
The entertaining medley: being a collection of genuine anecdotes, delightful stories, frolicks of wit and humour, with other notable display ...
Observations, good or bad, stupid or clever, serious or jocular, on Squire Foote’s dramatic entertainment, intitled, The minor. By a g ...
Understanding Business Valuation: A Practical Guide to Valuing Small to Medium Sized Businesses – Third Edition ...
Heartbreaking:

Staggering: