A carnival of technology

Dear Cristina,

You can stop recommending A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius to me now. I’ve read it. I didn’t really enjoy it.

Your pal,
David

When I think of memoirs, I think of records of World War II, of men climbing out of trenches, out of forests in a foreign land, separated from their platoon for days, weeks, caught in an alien land, lost in a foreign war, men who finally find friendly faces, maybe not so friendly but at least wearing a friendly flag on their sleeves, who demand a meal from a cook, a stranger, at gunpoint, because they’ve been caught in the trenches or forests or whatever it is they have in Germany for days and weeks and just want a goddamn ham sandwich. This wasn’t that kind of memoir.

Dave Eggers is the founder of McSweeney’s, which I am familiar with, though I have never read any of his work. He wrote a memoir about suffering—his and others—and losing your parents and having to raise a young brother is a hell of a trump card, but who hasn’t suffered? It’s a rare person that hasn’t seen a friend die, known someone to attempt suicide or try it themself, seen and felt pain in everything around them. The world kind of blows, and there’s nothing wrong with writing about that, but A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, like Mr. Eggers states in a short foreword offered as a guide to the reader, is kind of uneven. The characters breaking the fourth wall to become expository mouthpieces became exhausting fairly quickly. The Real World interview was unbearable, and I wish that was one of the sections I had been suggested to skip so that I could at least be forewarned. The book was interesting in parts, but overall it was just some jerk spinning tales about how much his life sucks (or at least sucked) and hoping to find some meaning in it. I don’t think I like memoirs.

One thing I did find especially interesting about this book is its ability to inspire. Maybe I found something resonating in the disjoint, rambling prose, or maybe I’m just upset that this chump—who cares if he lives in New York and wears hipster jersey shirts and went to art school—is famous and I’m not. I feel all funny inside. Maybe I’ll finally take all these scattered notes, dream logs—hideous things, my terrible chicken-scratch handwriting distorted and broken by the fog of sleep, illegible scrawlings about cheerleaders selling nachos and shopping for French mystery novels with my mother—and bizarre memoranda to myself about Kosher wine and Highway 41, and make something of it. Dave Egger’s book, behind its self-aware and solipsistic façade, seems to want to get people riled-up, get them to feel something, but I refuse to give him credit. I’ve been feeling this burning for a long time now, and this book only reminded me that I’m wasting too much of my life with other people’s crap. There was some interesting stuff in the latter parts of the book, but I think I should have taken his advice and stopped after the third or fourth chapter. That would have made a solid novella, and I would have liked it had I not paid a novel’s price.

I will be traveling next week. It will be a romantic journey, and there will be museums and monuments and everything will be grand. I will bring a blank notebook, more pages for my illegible scrawls, and a stack of novels not recommended by anyone or anything other than my own desires. It will be my birthday. I plan to open up a bottle of the Trader Joe’s brand Unibroue beer I bought last year—I don’t really like Trader Joe’s; they’re a store full of cut-rate store-brand crap, but they convince us that it’s great because they wear Hawaiian shirts and paint childish art on the walls, things that someone would scratch out in crayon on a Denny’s placemat—and I will drink it before noon, enjoying both my delicious aged ale and rebellion against society’s mores while I earn the last insurance discount I will ever see unless I get married, my speeding tickets now old enough to be forgotten, and I will then hop on a bus and go somewhere else, somewhere full of myth and wonder, somewhere away that has monuments and museums and things to write about illegibly in tiny pocket notebooks with tiny ink pens. I will style my hair in the fuck-it-all fashion I’ve paid staggering amounts for twice now using that waxy paste that wishes I would care more about starving children in Africa, and maybe I’ll meet someone on the way there and we’ll talk about books I bought on no one’s recommendation and have a grand old time.

I need a break.