i have discussed this before but i do have hipster tendencies. so when the huffington post listed the most hipster books of all time, and i had only read a handful of them, i decided to check them out. i started with dave eggers' a heartbreaking work of staggering genius.
i feel horrible for saying this, especially considering it's premise, a memoir about raising a younger sibling after both parents passing away, but i hated this book. it took everything i had to actually finish it. ironically, i should have listened to the rules and suggestions for enjoyment of this book (which is listed at the beginning) it suggested that "the first three or four chapters are all some of you might want to bother with. that gets you to page 109 or so, which is a nice length, a nice novella sort of length." i thought eggers was being cheeky when in fact he was just being honest, he knew the second half wasnt' worth it.
a heartbreaking work of staggering genius covers eggers' early twenties and what he encountered raising his little brother, tophe, after having lost both their parents within three months of each other. they lost their mother to stomach cancer, and the father to what i am assumed was a heart condition (i feel eggers really didn't share what happen to him, other than his sister finding him kneeling in the driveway one night), since he was a heavy drinker and smoker. due to the title and the premise, i imagined myself having an emotional connection to the book having just lost my grandmother. i was actually very hesitant about reading, worried that it would stir up too many memories and thoughts that i was not ready to revisit. i will admit that reading about their mother is icu was difficult to read, i did cry, reminded of being in icu with my grandmother. and later in the book when eggers discussed his speaking at this mother's memorial service (their parents donated their bodies to science so there wasn't a formal burial), i understood what he went through. i do recall when my grandmother first entered icu, i thought about what i would say at her funeral. one feels bad for thinking such thoughts but its something that needs to be considered. i also identified with egger's uncertainity when it came to speaking at the service. i was the same way, wanting to share but not wanting too. though i will add, i didn't want pity like he did but to honor my grandmother. but that was as far as my identification and enjoyment of the book went.
my enjoyment, seriously only went up until page 109, because that is the only part that truly discussed tophe. the rest was pretty much about the magazine, he and his friends started, which i did not find interesting at all. to be completely honest, the only real take away i had from the remainder of the book, was that eggers wasn't casted on mtv's real world: san francisco and that puck came to do a photo shoot for them. well not for a feature on puck but he was a model, they needed nude models for a piece about humans being the same. but yeah that is all i really remember. oh and i would have appreciated the innovativeness of the real world "interview" being a means of eggers discussing his childhood, but then when he had to let the cat out of the bag, recognizing that it was a made up interview to allow for this exploration, so i started to lose interest.
i really hated it. it was seriously just about the magazine. it could have been a work of staggering genius if he focused on the issues that he confronted while raising his brother more than whether or not he could still get laid.
i also think that i may have missed the mark on this book. had i read it 2000 (though i was in high school, i maybe have been to young) this would have been revolutionary. maybe if i read it fresh out of college, i would have enjoyed it more. i don't know what its right, i just know that it bored me.
i also want to add that i see how the book is hipstery. i mean this is the publishing page!
its very tongue-in-cheek and clever and i would have praised it if i loved the book. but since i did not enjoy it, i find it excessive and annoying.
furthermore, there is the "rules" for enjoying the book that i mentioned earlier. in addition to that there is a preface, contents page, acknowledgements (which runs for like 10 pages and includes diagrams and a random drawing of a stapler, seriously?!?!?!) all of which i did not read because i did not want to give this book, any more time in my life. though i will add that in the acknowledgement section, eggers says that the first 200 people that take a picture of a book and your receipt can receive a $5 check from him. i wonder if people really did that, i would have done that and still felt robbed because the book was horrible. you can also send it for a fictionalized version of the book on floppy disk, i might look into purchasing that if i still can. but yeah, i can see the coolness in this, but like anything hipster, if it sucks, one does become annoyed but it.
if a heartbreaking work of staggering genius is on your to-read list, just read up to page 109. i can tell you the story about real world and puck so you don't have to read the rest.
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