Daily Book Excerpt: Memoirs:
Next book on the Memoir/Letters/Journals shelf is A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
When this book came out in 2000, it seemed to me as though it had taken over the world. I was hearing the buzz about it, or feeling it (more accurately): the buzz was so deafening that I felt like I could sense the vibrations through the earth. It was one of those books. Everyone I knew was reading it, and in HARDBACK, so that meant people were racing out to buy it pronto, rather than waiting for the paperback. I hadn’t read any reviews, but I didn’t need to. The buzz about Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius was in the air.
Normally with that type of book, I refuse to read it on principle. At least initially. I am a bratty contrarian. “Everyone on the planet is doing something? Then NO I won’t do that same thing!” (I’ve probably missed out on a lot of good books that way. And then, when I have caved, and read a book that everyone else is reading on the subway – more often than not I am pleasantly surprised.) But the buzz around Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius was of a different variety, and if you remember it you will know what I am talking about. I actually did start to feel a strange kind of pressure to pick it up.
It was Mitchell who did the trick. I was in Chicago, Mitchell was reading it, and he would tear up when he was telling me about it (“He loves his brother so much …”), and Mitchell is an excellent judge of books, so that was the clincher. Also, I was in a bit of distress at the time (to put it mildly – if you go to that link, consider yourself warned!) and it seemed to me that maybe the book would have something to tell me, offer me, something I needed at that very sad time. I knew it was a memoir about a college-age student whose parents both die, within months of each other, and he is made guardian of his 8 year old brother. That’s all I knew. It sounded harrowing. I loved the title, I loved its hyperbolic ironic Eff You. It hit me right in the sweet spot.
I suppose there’s been a backlash against Eggers, at least that’s what I’ve heard. Too much success too soon? Too ambitious? Too … everywhere? I don’t care. I read his first novel – You Shall Know Our Velocity and I thought it was dreadful. I was disappointed. I have not read his novel about the Sudanese orphan, although I’ve heard phenomenal things. I love McSweeney’s. I love The Believer. I also am addicted to his The Best American Nonrequired Reading series. I don’t have all of them, but I have many and I have encountered some awesome pieces in those collections.
But Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is in the pantheon for me: a book that was an actual experience while reading it: a unique memorable experience. It grabbed me by the back of my neck, shook me around like a rag doll, and I had no choice but to succumb to it. Moby Dick was an equivalent reading experience. So was Atonement. And Geek Love. Books that throttle you, refuse to give you time to breathe, allow you no time to reflect. I can enjoy a book, even love it, and it doesn’t give me an experience like that. Books like that are special, they stand out.
I have not re-read it since my first encounter with it, and I am almost afraid to. What if it doesn’t stand up to a second viewing? I inhaled the book during a time of heartbreak and resignation, when I was letting go of a man I loved more than anything else in the world. I won’t soft-pedal it. It was a tragedy for me. Yes, I went on, of course I did, but I was forever marked. Nobody gets out of this life alive. And the only thing I felt like reading, the only thing that helped me forget/lose myself – but also go deeper, grieve, rejoice – was Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. It was a good gutcheck, of course. My tragedy paled in comparison to the tragedy in the book. So there was that necessary tonic. But it was more than that. Reading that book was a full-on three-dimensional experience. It appeared to me to have everything.
The sections that annoyed others (like the fictionalized Real World interview which goes off the rails) were absolute delights to me, and I never wanted them to end. The self-consciousness of the book (if you’ve read it and you didn’t notice the copyright page – do yourself a favor and go look very very carefully at that page) which others found annoying – I found laugh-out-loud funny. Who can explain why something hits the sweet spot? His humor was my humor. His sensibility was mine. He can be a breathtaking writer. The final section of the book is a masterpiece of Grief Writing. Up there with Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking. When Eggers lets go of the ultra self-awareness that causes him to divert into self-conscious rantings and ravings, he has the goods as a writer. He can do it. He is a phenomenally talented individual.
Eggers has spawned many imitators. And many of them get the self-consciousness, the narcissism, the pop culture references, the double-backs into self-aware ruminations about himself … but only a very very few could write in the manner of the final section of Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Snarky self-awareness is easy, it is now a commodity. It’s part of Eggers’ brand. But that’s not all there is. I have no interest in that alone. If you JUST have snarky self-awareness, then you are a bore. What’s underneath? What is really going on?
Maybe I’m ready to read it again.
The book was so powerful for me on the first read that looking through it this morning, I felt almost trepidation.
It’s rare that you can look at a book and say, “This book actually HELPED me go through something very difficult.”
Maybe I don’t need to revisit it. Maybe that first time was enough.
Here is an excerpt. The bragging tone of it is what turned some people off, but I always felt that that was just a survival technique, a way to survive the absolute catastrophe that had befallen his family. He was, what, 21 years old? You want him to be less egotistical about his grief and his situation? You want him to be more sedate, more knowing and philosophical? The boy was 21 years old. He was guardian to his grade-school-age brother and was suddenly thrust into a world he had not prepared for. Seeing themselves as glamorous orphans was a way to handle what had happened. I see right through the surface is what I am saying. With other writers, all they are is the surface. With Eggers, his persona (“look at me, a glamorous virile orphan at the school open house … everyone is talking about me … everyone admires me …”) is always covering up a volcano of confusion and panic. And while elements like the script below also seemed to annoy people, what I see here is twofold: 1. People are rude and nosy, and the fact that there is a “script” means that many many people said the exact same things to Eggers, treating the family tragedy like it’s some sort of traffic accident they can gawk at. Total lack of respect. It’s disgusting. 2. Therefore, Eggers totally has a right to have some fun with these nosy gawkers. Okay, threefold: Lastly, if you get distracted by the fact that there is a script, and you cease to read carefully because of it – then you will miss the heartfelt fear and panic that goes along with grief, embedded in that script. His relief that more time has passed, that now he can say “a few years ago my parents died” as opposed to “last winter”. Time completely morphs when you are grieving, and that is one of the most disorienting things about it, and something that no one tells you. How weird time gets. It is also an accurate depiction of how the grieving are often expected to take care of others. How the grieving are left with a sense of embarrassment that their own personal loss has taken up so much space, and so they are meant to feel an obligation to make others feel that “it’s not that bad, I’m okay” – even if you are not at ALL okay. Eggers starts with a mean-spirited takedown of every other person at the open house, moves into the maelstrom of associations that swirl through his head when he is asked innocent and not-so-innocent questions about what he is doing there, and then swirls back into a fantasy about what he and his brother must look like to the others. A defense mechanism.
It’s a tour de force.
Excerpt from A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
7:52 P.M.
The open house is still full – it goes until nine, not eight, as I had thought – and we are both overdressed. We walk in. Toph immediately untucks his shirt.
The walls are covered with corrected papers about slavery, and the first-graders’ unsettling self-portraits.
Heads turn. This is our first open house, and people are not sure what to make of us. I am surprised, having expected that everyone would have been briefed about our arrival. Kids look at Toph and say hi.
“Hi, Chris.”
And then they look at me and squint.
They are scared. They are jealous.
We are pathetic. We are stars.
We are either sad and sickly or we are glamorous and new. We walk in and the choices race through my head. Sad and sickly? Or glamorous and new? Sad/sickly or glamorous/new? Sad/sickly? Glamorous/new?
We are unusual and tragic and alive.
We walk into the throngs of parents and children.
We are disadvantaged but young and virile. We walk the halls and the playground, and we are taller, we radiate. We are orphans. As orphans, we are celebrities. We are foreign exchange people, from a place where there are still orphans. Russia? Romania? Somewhere raw and esoteric. We are the bright new stars born of a screaming black hole, the nascent suns burst from the darkness, from the grasping void of space that folds and swallows – a darkness that would devour anyone not as strong as we. We are oddities, sideshows, talk show subjects. We capture everyone’s imagination. That’s why Matthew wants Beth and me dead in a plane crash. His parents are old, bald, square, wear glasses, are wooden and gray, are cardboard boxes, folded, closeted, dead to the world — We ate at their house actually, not long ago, accepting a neighborly invitation sometime before Matthew’s plane crash comment. And we were bored to tears in their stillborn house, its wooden floors and bare walls – the daughter even played the piano for us, the father so haughtily proud of her, the poor bald guy. They owned no TV, there were no toys anywhere, the place was airless, a coffin —
But we! — we are great-looking! We have a style, which is messy, rakish, yet intriguingly so, singular. We are new and everyone else is old. We are the chosen ones, obviously, the queens to their drones – the rest of those gathered at this open house are aging, past their prime, sad, hopeless. They are crinkly and no longer have random sex, as only I among them am still capable of. They are done with such things; even thinking about them having sex is unappealing. They cannot run without looking silly. They cannot coach the soccer team without making a mockery of themselves and the sport. Oh, they are over. They are walking corpses, especially that imbecile smoking out in the courtyard. Toph and I are the future, a terrifyingly bright future, a future that has come from Chicago, two terrible boys from far away, cast away and left for dead, shipwrecked, forgotten, but yet, but yet, here, resurfaced, bolder and more fearless, bruised and unshaven, sure, their pant legs frayed, their stomachs full of salt water, but now unstoppable, insurmountable, ready to kick the saggy asses of the gray-haired, thickly bespectacled, slump-shouldered of Berkeley’s glowering parentiscenti!
Can you see this?
We walk around the classroom. In his homeroom, on the walls, there are papers about Africa. His paper is not on the wall.
“Where is your paper?”
“I don’t know. Ms. Richardson didn’t like it, I guess.”
“Hmmph.”
Who is this Ms. Richardson? She must be a moron. I want this “Ms. Richardson” brought out and driven before me!
The school is full of nice children but eccentric children, delicate and oddly shaped. They are what my friends and I, growing up at public schools, always envisioned private school kids were like – a little too precious, their innate peculiarities amplified, not muted, for better and worse. Kids who think they are pirates, and are encouraged to dress the part, in school. Kids who program computers and collect military magazines. Chubby boys with big heads and very long hair. Skinny girls who wear sandals and carry flowers.
After about ten minutes, we’re bored. My main reason for coming has gone bust.
I was looking to score.
I expected flirting. I expected attractive single mothers and flirting. My goal, a goal I honestly thought was fairly realistic, was to meet an attractive single mother and have Toph befriend the mother’s son so we can arrange playdates, during which the mother and I will go upstairs and screw around while the kids play outside. I expected meaningful glances and carefully worded propositions. I imagine that the world of schools and parents is oozing with intrigue and debauchery, that under its concerned and well-meaning facade, its two-parent families, conferences with teachers and thoughtful questions directed to the history teacher about Harriet Tubman, everyone is swinging.
But by and large they’re ugly. I scan the crowd milling in the courtyard. The parents are interesting only in their prototypical Berkeley-ness. They wear baggy tie-dyed, truly tie-dyed, pants, and do not comb their hair. Most are over forty. All of the men have beards, and are short. Many of the women are old enough to have mothered me, and look it. I am disheartened by the lack of possibility. I am closer in age to most of the children. Oh but there is one mother, a small-headed woman with long, long, straight black hair, thick and wild like a horse’s tail. She looks exactly like her daughter, same oval face, same sad dark eyes. I’ve seen her before, when I’ve driven Toph to school, and have guessed that she’s single; the father is never present.
“I’m gonna ask her out,” I say.
“Please, don’t. Please,” Toph says. He really thinks I might.
“Do you like the daughter at all? This could be fun – we could double date!”
“Please, please don’t.”
Of course I won’t. I have no nerve. But he does not know that yet. We walk the halls decorated with construction paper and student work. I meet Ms. Richardson, the homeroom teacher, who is tall and black and severe – with distended, angry eyes. I meet the science teacher who looks precisely like Bill Clinton and stutters. There is a girl in Toph’s class who, at nine, is taller than her parents, and heavier than me. I want Toph to be her friend and make her happy.
A woman nearby is looking at us. People look at us. They look and wonder. They wonder if I am a teacher, not knowing how to place me, thinking maybe that because I have scraggly facial hair and am wearing old shoes that I will take and molest their children. I probably look threatening. The woman, this one looking at us, has long gray hair and large glasses. She is wearing a floor-length patterned skirt and sandals. She leans toward us, points her finger to me and to Toph and back, smiles. Then we find our places and read the script:
Hi. This is your … son?
Uh … no.
Brother?
Yeah.
(squinting to make sure)
Oh, you can tell right away.
(though knowing that it is not really true, that he is old and severe-looking, and his brother glows)
Yeah, people say that.
Having fun?
Sure. Sure.
You go to school at Cal?
No, no, I finished school a few years ago.
And you live around here?
Yeah, we live a few miles north. Close to Albany.
So you live with your folks?
No, just us.
But … where are your parents?
(thinking, thinking: “They’re not here.” “They couldn’t make it.” “I have no idea, actually.”)
Oh, they died a few years ago.
(grabbing BROTHER’S forearm)
Oh, I’m sorry.
No, no, don’t worry.
(wanting to add, as he sometimes does, “It’s not your fault.” He loves that line, especially when he tacks on: “Or was it?”)
So he lives with you?
Yeah.
Oh, gosh. That’s interesting.
(thinking of the state of the house. It is interesting)
Well, we have fun. What grade is your …
Daughter. Fourth. Amanda. If I may, can I ask how they died?
(again scanning possibilities for the entertainment of him and his brother. Plane crash. Train crash. Terrorists. Wolves. He has made up things before, and he was amused, though younger brother’s amusement level was unclear)
Cancer.
But … at the same time?
About five weeks apart.
Oh my God.
(with inexplicable little chuckle)
Yeah, it was weird.
How long ago was this?
A few winters ago.
(BROTHER thinks always how much he likes the “a few winters ago” line. It’s new. It sounds dramatic, vaguely poetic. For a while it was “last year”. Then it was “a year and a half ago”. Now. much to BROTHER’S relief, it’s “a few years ago”. “A few years ago” has a comfortable distance. The blood is dry, the scabs hardened, peeled. Early on was different. Shortly before leaving Chicago, BROTHERs went to the barber to have TOPH‘s hair cut, and BROTHER was really hoping it wouldn’t come up, but when it did come up, BROTHER answered, “A few weeks ago.” At that the haircutting woman stopped, went through the antique saloon-style doors to the back room, and stayed there for a while. She came back red-eyed. BROTHER felt terrible. He is always feeling terrible, when the innocent, benign questions of unsuspecting strangers yield the bizarre answer he must provide. Like someone asking about the weather and being told of nuclear winter. But it does have its advantages. In this case, BROTHERs got a free haircut.)
(holding BROTHER‘s forearm again)
Well. Good for you! What a good brother you are!
(Smiling. Wonders: What does that mean? He is often told this. At soccer games, at school fund-raisers, at the beach, at the baseball card shows, at the pet store. Sometimes the person telling him this knows their full biography and sometimes he or she does not. BROTHER doesn’t understand the line, both what it means and when it became a standard sort of expression that many different people use. What a good brother you are! BROTHER had never heard the saying before, but now it comes out of all kinds of people’s mouths, always phrased the same way, the same words, the same inflections – a rising sort of cadence:
[Then there is a staff of music, with the actual notes listed out, and the lyrics: “What a good brother you are!”]
What does that mean? He smiles, and if Toph is close, he’ll punch him in the arm, or try to trip him – look at us horsing around! Light as air! – then BROTHER will say the same thing he always says after they say their words, the thing that seems to deflate the mounting tension, the uncomfortable drama swelling in the conversation, while also throwing it back at the questioner, because he often wants the questioner to think about what he or she is saying. What he says, with a cute little shrug, or a sigh, is:)
Well, what are you gonna do?
(MOTHER smiles and squeezes BROTHER‘s forearm one more time, then pats it. BROTHERs look to AUDIENCE, wink, and then break into a fabulous Fossean dance number, lots of kicks and high-stepping, a few throws and catches, a big sliding-across-the-stage-on-their-knees thing, then some more jumping, some strutting, and finally, a crossing-in-midair front flip via hidden trampoline, with both of them landing perfectly, just before the orchestra, on one knee, hands extended toward audience, grinning while breathing heavily. The crowd stands and thunders. The curtain falls. They thunder still.)
FIN
As the crowd stomps the floor for a curtain call, we sneak through the back door and make off like superheroes.
Beautiful description of the zeitgeist that surrounded that book.
Sheila, I love you more and more. I, initially had a hard time with this book–as I could not grasp, nor fathom his situation. I remember laughing out loud on the the train and then balling my eyes out in the privacy of my bedroom. The love that he has for his brother is astounding and the FUN that they have….AMAZING. After reading this post, I am going to re-visit this one again. Thank you!
God that last exchange…. trying to figure out how to respond the bizarre things people say when you’re grieving. Nearly 10 years later and I still remember trying to explain to people why we didn’t quit on our season just because our coach (who most of us called Mama V because she was always there when we needed her) had passed away… It was well-meant concern but still. RAGE. “You girls are going to compete this weekend? Good for you!” “No we rode a day on a charter bus just to show up and cry”. Gah.
I’ll have to read this. I missed the kerfluffle when it came out. Maybe not though. Old and scabbed over those wounds still twinge.
I lived and breathed that book about 10 years ago.
I read it, then reread it, then rereread it.
I own four copies of it. One is the copy I originally read, one is a copy my friend, Angela, had signed for me in San Franciso, one is a hardcover copy I got in the bargain books section at Barnes & Noble and one is a paperback copy I loan to friends.
I was obsessed.
I totally identified with Eggers even though at that time I had no idea what he was going through, both of my parents were living.
He mentioned in the book that he felt like he was being watched, as if cameras were on him all the time. I don’t know why but I feel that way a lot….as if my life were a reality show.
Also, I never thought he was making a mockery out of those tragic events. I, like you, felt like he was just coping.
My family does that. My sisters and I have had many near-embarrassing moments at family funerals where we will start giggling at each other….not because we have no respect for the dead and the grieving family, but sometimes, being funny is how we cope.
At my grandmother’s funeral, we noticed my sister – who showed up late – had her wet hair in a bun and there was hair dye dripping down the back of her neck. For some reason, at 4 am, she decided to color her hair and ended up spending so much time on it that she was late for the funeral and didn’t have time to dry it.
We were so sad about my grandmother’s death and had no idea how to grieve correctly and suddenly, there is our older sister with Nice ‘n Easy running down her neck.
It was just too much.
Anyway, like you, I haven’t read this book in years and I’m almost afraid to for fear of losing the magic that it held for me all those years ago.
I have purchased everything he’s written and some I liked, some I didn’t.
What is the What is the book about the Sudanese orphans and it’s painful and powerful. I recommend it.
De – I will definitely check out What Is the What.
Why am I not surprised that you would have responded to this book in a similar way? Not one second of it annoyed me. I was completely swept away. But oh, how I fear reading it again!!!
Let’s not read it again. Let’s just leave it be.
Although, if you do read it again…let me know! LOL