Mention Appertaining To Books A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Title:A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Author:Dave Eggers
Book Format:Paperback
Book Edition:First Edition
Pages:Pages: 485 pages
Published:February 13th 2001 by Vintage (first published February 17th 2000)
Categories:Fiction
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A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius Paperback | Pages: 485 pages
Rating: 3.68 | 163351 Users | 9061 Reviews

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'When you read his extraordinary memoir you don't laugh, then cry, then laugh again; you somehow experience these emotions all at once.'

"Well, this was when Bill was sighing a lot. He had decided that after our parents died he just didn't want any more fighting between what was left of us. He was twenty-four, Beth was twenty-three, I was twenty-one, Toph was eight, and all of us were so tried already, from that winter. So when something would come up, any little thing, some bill to pay or decision to make, he would just sigh, his eyes tired, his mouth in a sorry kind of smile.

But Beth and I...Jesus, we were fighting with everyone, anyone, each other, with strangers at bars, anywhere -- we were angry people wanting to exact revenge. We came to California and we wanted everything, would take what was ours, anything within reach. And I decided that little Toph and I, he with his backward hat and long hair, living together in our little house in Berkeley, would be world-destroyers. We inherited each other and, we felt, a responsibility to reinvent everything, to scoff and re-create and drive fast while singing loudly and pounding the windows. It was a hopeless sort of exhilaration, a kind of arrogance born of fatalism, I guess, of the feeling that if you could lose a couple of parents in a month, then basically anything could happen, at any time -- all bullets bear your name, all cars are there to crush you, any balcony could give way; more disaster seemed only logical.

And then, as in Dorothy's dream, all these people I grew up with were there, too, some of them orphans also, most but not all of us believing that what we had been given was extraordinary, that it was time to tear or break down, ruin, remake, take and devour. This was San Francisco, you know, and everyone had some dumb idea -- I mean, wicca? -- and no one there would tell you yours was doomed. Thus the public nudity, and this ridiculous magazine, and the Real World tryout, all this need, most of it disguised by sneering, but all driven by a hyper-awareness of this window, I guess, a few years when your muscles are taut, coiled up and vibrating. But what to do with the energy? I mean, when we drive, Toph and I, and we drive past people, standing on top of all these hills, part of me wants to stop the car and turn up the radio and have us all dance in formation, and part of me wants to run them all over."

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Original Title: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
ISBN: 0375725784 (ISBN13: 9780375725784)
Edition Language: English
Literary Awards: Pulitzer Prize Nominee for General Nonfiction (2001), Guardian First Book Award Nominee (2000), Borders Original Voices Award for Nonfiction (2000), Puddly Award for Memoir (2001)

Rating Appertaining To Books A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Ratings: 3.68 From 163351 Users | 9061 Reviews

Piece Appertaining To Books A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
This book has not aged well.I read it when it first came out, somewhere around 2000, and I remember loving its high-energy sentences and how Eggers shared his emotions about losing both his parents to cancer and taking guardianship of his youngest brother, Toph (short for Christopher). I was in my 20s back then, and I could relate to the author's angst about life, his career, his relationships, blah blah blah.Fourteen years later, I picked it up again as a book club assignment. My reaction this

I hated loved was totally frustrated by was sucked into couldn't stand couldn't put down dreaded picking up wanted to like was attacked by wanted to burn finished this book.Alternative title: A Self-Indulgent Work of Festering GeniusThe worst book I couldn't put down; the best book I've ever wanted to set on fire.Updated: Found in my bedside reading journal:- it's self-conscious & pretentious, but pretentious in the way that smart kids are when they're trying to be cool but are still riled

Non-fiction(ish). Dave Eggers' parents are dead, and now he's got to take care of his little brother. This is their sort-of-true story.Because I'm a geek, Dave Eggers endears himself to me just by his modifications to the verso, which include his placement on a sexual-orientation scale of 1 to 10 and the reminder that the military-industrial-entertainment complex really has little power over us as individuals. The book suffers from all the weaknesses Eggers warns us about in the notes: it's

OK, I give up @40%. There are some nice ideas, few interesting scenes and fun dialog here and there but it's all buried in cum from all that verbal mastrubation.

Mr. Eggers has a genius for two things: finding and publishing some of the more exciting writers working today; turning "Weeee! Weeee! Look at me!! I am beautiful and so good to my little brother!!! Weeeee! Don't you want to touch me?" into 496 pages.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck. I was reading this book and around page 237 (or was it 327? fuck), I figured it out- he's talking to ME. He wrote this book for me. Dave Eggers looked into the future and saw that I would want to read a self-referential, self-satisfying memoir. He knew that I would be trying to figure stuff, being in my twenties and all, and while not dealing with the enormity of losing both parents and having to rear a young sibling, I would have my own shit to work through. He.

I had problems with Dave Eggers for a long time. Having never read a word he'd written, I immaturely thought I had every right to hate him. He was young, successful, and adored by critics. That was enough right there. When it first came out, I would see AHWOSG in the bookstore and grimace at it (more than once, I even gave it the evil eye). My loathing was out of sheer jealousy. I recognized it as such back then, but still carried on. It's hard to let go of things sometimes.OK. Fast forward