I had been told by a friend that I should read "What Is the What," another novel by Dave Eggers. However, while perusing a local used bookstore, I came across this, the only Eggers book that I had seen in a used bookstore. I was intrigued. First, it was an Eggers book, and second, the title: it seems brash, headstrong, and overconfident.Much like the main character, Eggers himself."A Heartbreaking Work..." is an autobiographical work about Egger's young life, right before and after his mother and father die of unrelated cancers, and Eggers takes over the role of guardian for his younger brother. The relationship that they have -- and that is portrayed in the book -- is complicated, nuanced, and finds itself as the central motivations for almost everything that Eggers does. It essentially defined his life, and it rears its head at the worst moments (during job interviews, while he is with women, when he's just trying to have a normal life with friends in a bar). And yet, the bond between them remains one of the strongest familial relationships that I have encountered in a while. Their dialogue is perfect, their interactions are perfect, and I don't think I could imagine a better representation of brotherly "love" outside of the "real world."But what really had me hooked with this novel is the writing style. Eggers writes effortlessly. I've said that before about authors, but it has never been more true than for this writer. The words seem like the most perfect portrayal of the conversational style of a well-educated person who knows exactly how to say what he wants to say, even if it's simply rambling frustrations over various situations. Punctuation never halters the reading -- something that I intend to study and steal for my own writing -- and the style is all his own, enviable but unattainable.And if there was ever an example to look to for how to write stream of consciousness, then this is it. I can barely stand Faulkner's SoC writing because it's dense, overly complicated, and tends to ramble off topic for far too long before returning to any semblance of a point. And I get that that's kind of the point. It's supposed to be the accurate portrayal of the thoughts in a character's head as they occur. But without some sort of structure, the written thoughts become too convoluted for their own good. But with this work, Eggers strikes a near perfect balance between rabid fire, punctuation-less representations of thoughts, and truly important and interesting plot-centric moments.Another aspect of the work that I loved was the post-modern self-awareness that works its way through every aspect of the novel. Chapters break away from the plot to include moment of self-aware introspection (sometimes about the act of writing the book itself), and Eggers messes with the form just enough to break barriers that I have not seen broken in any other work I've read so far. The interview portion near the middle of the work is absolutely brilliant.To sum: this work certainly deserved to be Time's Best Book of the Year for 2000.That doesn't mean, though, that I loved everything about it. I understand that he was looking for accuracy in his speech, his thoughts, and the interactions with the other characters, but there is simply too much profanity. I can handle swearing to a point -- and you could call most incidents of this in the novel "natural" or "realistic" -- but it was too much for my tastes. I read past them, of course. It's entirely possible to sweep one's eyes over certain words without reading them in that inner voice that we all have when we read. But sometimes it became a bit of a hassle when certainly there could have been some alternatives.Profanity aside, this work only made me want to search out Eggers' other works even more. I have a feeling I'll be haunting the "E" portions of the "Fiction" sections of used bookstores for a while until I get something else from this man.
4/5
-JJ
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