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Brotherly love | page 1, 2
Mr. Eggers does not write of his tragedy -- and there is no other word for it -- as if it were the most horrific thing that has ever happened to a person. As Mr. Eggers states in his acknowledgments, "he is not the only person to ever lose his parents, and ... he is not the only person ever to lose his parents and inherit a youngster. But he would like to point out that he is currently the only such person with a book contract." (Mr. Eggers also includes one of my favorite lines from Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest" in his acknowledgments: "To lose one parent may be regarded as misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.") We live on a blood- and tragedy-drenched planet, and while the plight of the Eggers family is heartbreaking, worse fates have befallen other families. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius By Dave Eggers
For instance, at the same time I was giving a slipshod, Xanax-impaired read to Mr. Eggers' very fine new book, my boyfriend was reading Philip Gourevitch's "We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families," an absolutely harrowing account of the genocide in Rwanda. (If you're looking for fresh reasons to loathe the French, my boyfriend recommends Mr. Gourevitch's very fine book.) Mr. Eggers' parents died at home, surrounded by their helpless, anguished children, attended by nurses, while painkilling drugs dripped into their I.V.s. Here in Oprah-land, we like to pretend that pain is equal, that no one suffers more than the next person. That is not true, as Mr. Eggers admits. His parents died too soon, they died painful deaths, but they weren't hacked to death in front of their children by their machete-wielding next-door neighbors. The general thrust of Mr. Eggers' very fine new book, besides fate's maddeningly random cruelties, is how Mr. Eggers and other media-savvy, well-educated young people make their way in the world: They fake it. By holding the roles fate forces them to play (parent, wage earner, MTV "Real World" cast member) at arm's length, Mr. Eggers and his contemporaries mock and inhabit their lives at the same time, living compromised lives like everyone else, but paradoxically on their own terms. We root for Mr. Eggers as he reinvents the role of parent in "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius." But like the dads we wish we had, and like the dads we all long to be (and can't be), Mr. Eggers' dual roles as sibling and father figure allow him to alternately play dad and best friend, wearing both roles lightly. If only to spite Jedediah Purdy, it is Mr. Eggers' life-affirming cynicism and sense of irony that allow him to embrace his adult responsibilities. That Mr. Eggers can keep his sense of irony alive while his parents are dying and then continue to keep it alive once he has stepped into the normally irony-free roles of parent, breadwinner and provider is no small achievement. Mr. Eggers knows that parenthood is a joke the universe has played on him, but he manages to pull off an amazing double-cross, turning parenthood into a joke that he's playing on the universe (or, at the very least, on Simon & Schuster). What's most amazing about Mr. Eggers' very fine new book, what staggers the reader and justifies the book's title, cover art and position on the New York Times bestseller list, is how thoroughly Mr. Eggers' self-deprecating tone and narrative tricks suck the reader in. Mr. Eggers allows us to remain as wary of cheap sentiment as he himself clearly is, paying us the compliment of not presuming we'll weep on cue, like Oprah's studio audience. Mr. Eggers doesn't rely on the facts of his family tragedy or on his readers' too-often-taken-for-granted empathy. He dares to entertain us, and then, once we've let our guard down, his very fine new book breaks our motherfucking hearts. In fact, I challenge anyone to read even the first chapter of Mr. Eggers' very fine new book and remain unmoved. As I lay in bed with my boyfriend one night, while he read about Rwanda and I read Mr. Eggers' hilariously horrifying account of his mother's death, I became so upset I had no choice but to take another Xanax and go watch "Letterman."
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