enter emily, the book snob...
went to the pitt bookstore today to get pens and highlighters (but only bought one of each, since the prices at the bookstore seem to be set with undergrads' parents' credit cards in mind).
on my way to the register, i passed a new printing of john cheever's "the wapshot scandal". i adore john cheever. truly -- i think he's brilliant. but this particular printing included an introduction by dave eggers. the horror! friends, there may be only one way to ruin john cheever. and that one way is dave eggers.
all i know is he'd better keep his dirty, no-talent-hack hands off cheever's "bullet park".
p.s. there's only one person i know who might take issue with my hatred of dave eggers. so here's my preemption -- moon, don't you DARE try to defend eggers on my blog! he is and forever will be a bandwagony flash-in-the-pan DFW-wannabe who is neither entertaining nor innovative. mcsweeney's is bad pop-literature. bad bad bad.
there. i feel better now.
posted by emily @ Wednesday, October 26, 2005
6 comments
6 Comments:
Aw come on, I might not have bothered if you hadn't invited me to, and I don't know where you got the idea that I'm an avid fan of his. I don't know McSweeney's except to note they've had a few funny moments that I have discovered through various hyperlinks. While I probably view AHWOSG with more generosity than you, I think it's overwrought, too long, and a knock-off, albeit a precocious and skillful one, of D.F. Wallace, who will forever be better at that sort of narrative (and others).
That said, a propos innovation, I've never read a book quite like You Shall Know . . . in terms of aesthetic framework, non-authoritative authorial narration, etc. It has a voice entirely its own. I don't think it's brilliant, but I think it's a damned-sight better and more imaginative than the work of any number of contemporary novelists who currently enjoy sweetheart status with the critical establishment.
Nothing Eggers has done is any more contrived than J.S. Foer's ouevre, about which I remain very agnostic. And indeed, Foer's work has clearer antecedents, albeit largely in South American literature, than Eggers. Indeed, inasmuch as Foer's first book far exceeded his second on every level, I think right now he's the more obvious flash-in-the-pan candidate, given that I think Eggers' second book exceeds his first. (I add this only to preempt any suggestion that I'm somehow enslaved to critical trends which seem to favor Eggers.)
You know better than to tell me what to do. If you'd like, you can come over and bitch and moan about whatever you think will piss me off on my blog. That's what it's there for. :-)
moony -- you're so easily provoked! i love it! and i didn't expect you to really rush to defend the likes of mcsweeney's. but i knew you'd at least know what mcsweeney's was!
you know how i feel about j.s. foer. i thought _everything is illuminated_ was gosh darn magical, but was colossally let down by _extremely loud and incredibly close_. it was too...predictable? superficial? gimmicky?
and i was so put off by eggers' first book that i dared not touch anything else he shat into the world. i even own that goddamn thing in hardcover! i'll never let go of that shame. ever...
Dave Eggers = pompous. Sandy dislikes pompous writers. See also, Ernest Hemingway, Jack Kerouac.
And no, I don't think "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" is supposed to be tongue-in-cheek pompous. I think it is, actually, pompous.
That is all.
No it's not all. I think Chuck Palahuik or whatever, the guy that wrote Fight Club, actually achieves what Eggers fails to achieve, and people should read his books instead.
That's all for real.
slk
pompous, indeed! i don't think eggers is a self-aware/mature/smart enough writer to be tongue-in-cheek pompous.
No it's not all. I think Chuck Palahuik or whatever, the guy that wrote Fight Club, actually achieves what Eggers fails to achieve, and people should read his books instead.
If Eggers was shooting for simplistic, good-for-a-chuckle, I'll-replace-serious-invention-with-one-flare-of-a-vaguely-clever-taboo-idea-and-run-with it-all-the-way-down-the-beach-until-the-light-flickers-out-on, like, page 68, then yeah, Palahniuk absolutely has a leg up on Eggers.
Nothing's more pompous than thinking you can sell precisely the same gimmick to your readers seven times in a row. Nothing's more disappointing than readers who let you.
At least Eggers has gone in two different directions with his two books, which is actually more than one can say about Foer, who probably has more pure talent than either Eggers or Palahniuk.
And, btw, Eggers has been collaborating for some time with Spike Jonze and Maurice Sendak on the movie version of Where the Wild Things Are, which after a ten-year journey is finally heading into pre-production very soon.
Palahniuk, on the other hand, is probably lurking in some sewer in the Pacific Northwest looking for new ways to prove that he's the hippest, most mysterious mediocre writer in the History of Western Literature. With a really cool jacket, who seems to cultivate the look of a man who will never tire of picking up anonymous, ordinary women from townie bars for one night stands.
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