Can anyone explain the appeal of Dave Eggers to me!?

But see, Jed, if I want to know how you think and are, I'd much rather read YOU on ILX or on your blog, if you have one -- i.e. in a context where you're pretending to be you and nothing more grandiose -- than read Eggers swinging his pretenses in the wind while self-consciously "encapsulating" whatever you want to call the demographic he belongs to. When I want fiction, I'd rather read things that actually are fictional. See "typing not writing" quote about Kerouac from hipster books thread.

Then again I suppose I'm a hopeless formalist... not that you could tell from my rambling ILX posts but I consider this play...

So, no, I can't explain the appeal. Maybe I'm too old.

Prokopsm: There are totally mood books. I have books I love and read all the time and couldn't bear to be without, but if they get me at the wrong moment, I can't stand the sight of them. A day later and I want to eat the suckers, I like them so much.

"Now, there was a time when such a question -- albeit probably without the colloquial spin -- would have originated from my own brain"

And then, he didn't put down a girl that only knew the Lips "She Don't Use Jelly Song". The way it was said was,

"She rolled her eyes. "Oh I really liked them on 90210," she sneered, assuming that this would put me and the band in our respective places."

And then he defended the Lips. Remember, the Lips toured with Red Hot Chili Peppers. They played with Justin Timberlake. They supported/backed Beck's new(ish) terrible album tour. They're great big sell-outs/not-keepers-of-real. His whole point is that it doesn't matter if you don't keep shit real because keeping shit real isn't a big deal. It usually has to do with wearing a sufficiently ironic tshirt.

I couldn't load the URL for the actual article. My citations are from the following website: http://www.aphrodigitaliac.com/mm/archive/2000/05/15/

I haven't read any of Egger's work; I enjoy the writers he supports in McSweeney's. This interview, though, which I read some time ago, makes me really like the guy. Leave him alone, you're all just jealous.

For what it's worth, I really enjoyed both of his books. I thought that Velocity showed up the travel bug for what it really is - a pointless dash around the world that ends up with you having all these bizarre and mundane experiences and memories that you could have stayed at home for.

has anyone fallen?

http://timetoreadsomeeggers.ytmnd.com/

Now he seems to be writing a novelisation of 'Where the Wild Things Are', which seems deeply unnecessary.

in some way that made me roll my eyes, mentally, and go "... typical." although i can't quite see how.

i expected to find myself defending him on this thread, but i suppose i felt i'd had to do enough of that with my sixth form english teacher.

hey, ann sterzinger wrote a novel!!

"Join Edgar Rodger, a fledgling private eye and former murder-desk rewrite man for a Chicago daily, as he descends into the bizarre world of the city's favorite artsy-cultural alternative weekly paper. Inspired equally by Wodehouse and Chandler, Girl Detectives lightens the murder-mystery brew with social satire and sick slapstick as it conjures up a fun-house milieu where nobody can seem to be themselves- not even a corpse. Kimmie Wrigley, a functional illiterate whose family fortune helped her skate into a job as a Chiculture staff writer, was driving her editor to drink when she disappeared. She was also busy stealing a man from Maurinette Meede, the imperious, blue-blooded food critic . But the paper's proofreaders -- all slightly unhinged by their 'intellectual' dead-end jobs - also hated the dopey heiress on principle. With so many potential killers, there's only one thing for Rodger to do: blackmail them till they sign on as deputy detectives and rat each other out."

well, i'm assuming it's the same anne no-e sterzinger. i could be wrong.

lol this generations kurt vonnegut with emotions!!!!!!!!!!!! i think remember that lethem short on mcsweeneys label about the body and the yearning for an eye and then a reveal at the end that is just high art?> nice troll, only good lethem aamof

i'd like to see eggars reenact the liz lemon approach to ghetto kids on christmas at his club house

new d sedavage off anticon

This does indeed sound like the same sterizinger we know and love at ILB. Amazon has it new for $17 and used for $41!

amazon uk doesn't have it at all. i'm still trying to work out what the three posts between my last and yours mean. they're very compressed.

he seems to be writing a novelisation of 'Where the Wild Things Are', which seems deeply unnecessary.

Corrected.

STRAWBERRIES etc. seems to believe the world lives inside his head, so that the fleetingest allusion is all that is necessary to evoke the proper context.

I didn't even know he had a new book out until my friend loaned it to me (it seemed impolite to say no, and I liked 'Zeitoun'). Anyone read it?

Really never liked this guy. I just don't think he's a very good writer. He's a wholly unexceptional and even weak writer who is overly ambitious and gimicky, is what he is, imo.

Didn't know he had a new book, but he wrote the screenplay for the new Gus Van Sant / Matt Damon movie about fracking (also starring Frances McDormand and John Krasinski), coming out in January I think.

i'm reading a neal stephenson collection right now, and I think he's a better writer than eggers (and as one of the essays is actually a foreword to a david foster wallace book, I'm thinking he might even be a better writer than DFW, or at least he does a good enough impression), but neal stephenson doesn't have a pirate store that teaches kids how to write, so advantage eggers.

Halfway through, new one's really good. Clear, simply narrative style without drawing too much attention to itself. Former bike salesman now pitching IT in Saudi Arabia.

Finished A Hologram for the King and really enjoyed it. (Never read Heartbreaking Work or got caught up in his work back then.) Very ambitious decline-of-American-empire story, balancing micro and macro.

im reading it too & almost done. yeah, it's solid for the most part. im breezing thru it which is exactly what i wanted from it tbqh

yeah i liked this. can see it as a gus vant sant movie (gvs doing this other fracking thing from an eggers script iirc) as long as it doesnt try 2 amp up the drama @ all & keeps its aimlessness

i was kinda eh about it, a lot of the stuff about the recession and the narrator's place in the economy throughout his professional life was too on-the-nose and eggers' writing is clumsy in places but then occasionally he goes somewhere unexpected and interesting - the parts about life in saudi arabia were the most effective. overall it felt pretty slight.

yeah i mean i think it's v scene-based, dont disagree w/ any of what u said, & would be hard 2 adapt well, am into the "nothing happens"/day-to-day aspect of it; could prob be better written 4 sure

lol

I have a very high tolerance for guy-wandering-around-construction-site-of-future-city stories and movies. In this one, the chase scene in the future condo was one of the best parts.

The first third reminded me of George Saunders, with people on the job and facing the combination of repetition, waiting, and boredom.

Tom Hanks movie version of this has only one showing per day at my local cineplex, at 9:45 p.m.