I don't like criticism as its practiced professionally, and I've said I don't want to use this space to hand it out. I'm going to try and find ways to talk about other people's work and how it's affected me without losing sight of the fact that they had the courage to do it, which is more than I can say. However, I do consider myself a writer (despite lack of abundant proof), and I do spend a lot of time thinking about writing, about how I do things, how I should do things, about the way things should be done. Therefore, I would be dishonest if I didn't discuss the Work in Question in terms of artistic decisions made, and why I would or wouldn't have made the same choices.
In the Work in Question, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, or AHWOSG, Dave Eggers goes heavy on style and device. Style is something I always find influential, for better or worse (I can feel his style creeping in as I'm writing, and I'm fighting against it - but this parenthesis is an example of it). His style is invasive, in that it's so close to the kind of chatter that happens in my head. And, if I find my mental sentences get shorter and more terse when I read Hemingway, he is easier to shake off than someone who's paranoia is so similar to my own. Two points awarded to Dave Eggers: one for creating a clear and recognizable voice, and another for getting into the head of his character - and getting his head into my head. The problem with that is that the paranoid, fun, silly, self-reflective, hyper-critical ego-talk that goes on in my head drives me crazy; I often wish it would shut up, and I confess that I often wish Mr. Eggers would, too. And yet I keep reading.
I'm very glad that Dave Eggers wrote this book in the way he did, and that he did it well. I'm glad because it's a good story, told in a way that stands out, and I'm glad because he has saved me the trouble of trying to do something that way, and finding out that I really don't want to. The story could stand on its own, without all the self-consciousness, and it would have been readable, moving, maybe even heartbreaking, but not really all that interesting. It might have been Story but not Art. The way of telling it is original, but not THAT original - 150 years ago the Romantics were playing with the characters addressing the reader directly, or the audience, as in Peer Gynt, when Ibsen has one character say "One cannot die in the middle of Act Five." Still, it's good for a laugh and gives that pleasurable moment of mental shift as one sees things from two different points of view - invisible participant and reader - at once. Kind of like certain psychedelic experiences. That is only one of his devices, and one of the most obvious.
Eggers is brave to go head to head with some of the conceits of novel-writing, and especially of memoirs, and this is one reason his book is capital-A Art. The manipulation of characters - especially those based on real people - and the manipulation of the reader, the arrangement of scenes, the very right of the author to think he's so clever that he can tell the reader something: all these raise questions that need to be asked, and he asks and attempts to answer them within and around the text. He gets very involved in imaginary dialogues, haranguing himself for his artistic choices and trying to justify them. In some ways I admire this as bravery, and as a conceptual device showing the layers of paint beneath the picture on the surface. On the other hand, it also comes off as cowardly: his attempts to head off any criticism, or to tear himself to shreds for his choices before anyone else can, stop him from making clear and precise statements. Given his claim in the Appendix about looking the reader straight in they eye and just telling them something, he spends a lot of time building up to and then explaining or apologizing for anything he says. I think of a song on the latest Treatment album which comes down to the simple line, "You lied to me, and that hurts." Eggers rarely allows himself the simplicity of such an avowal. There are a few exceptions, and they are enjoyable (see quotes below). I much more admire those who make simple and honest statements and let them stand, damn the consequences. It's understood by most readers, I think, that if you're making the statement, you've spent some time thinking about it, about possible criticism it may receive, alternative points of view, and so on, and have decided, as an artist, that this is best statement you have to offer right now, and that it belongs there. If people don't understand, it's probably their problem, and if not, you can try again later. Writing down your every thought and fear regarding a statement is not only distracting, it's annoying. The most annoying thing about it is that it reminds me of me, in that I overthink things to such a degree they never get started, let alone finished, and I'm so terrified of criticism, I keep rewriting what I have in different versions that please a certain editor in my head, until I'm left with nothing, which is what those mental editors really want. The difference is that Eggers does all his dancing around but still eventually gets on with the story, gets it finished & published, writes the appendix for the paperback edition and gets on with his life.
The other cowardly aspect is his attacks on real or imagined critics in his notes and appendix, telling them to lighten up, telling them they don't get him or his work. Can someone so reflective have not thought that readers might be able to see through him, saying, 'You know what? Your humour is just another front. We know the tricks, and we've seen them before in our college newspapers. If you didn't want to be taken seriously, you wouldn't have put thousands of hours into a serious artistic project and made it to come to our attention."
So would it have been better to avoid all the gut-twisting self-consciousness of the narrative? Not all of it. Some of it is fun, or funny, and pleasurable to read. But I would have preferred the balance shifted toward the earnest end of the scale. I assess things by the way they make me feel as well as they way they make me think, and reading AHWOSG made me feel like I was skimming the inexplicably hard surface of a deep lake. I can see the depth, I know it's there, I want to go down into it and explore it, but I keep bouncing off this shiny surface. In the end, I've been given a lot to think about, but I feel like I've been robbed of the emotional experience. I feel like the promise of the opening chapter is never delivered (the opening chapter of narrative, not the lengthy and humourous acknowledgments and so on: the sarcasm, self-consciousness, and multiple-layered intellectual torsion gets delivered in full). The times when he gets close are so exciting: I feel like, "Here it comes, the point where he's really going to take us inside the experience!", but then the lights come up and we are forced to consider, again, that it's all an illusion. We're left with a story about someone telling a story, and he is forced to tell us that he's enraged, or guilty, or sad, but he won't actually take us there or show us.
So that's his business, and that's my opinion. Dave Eggers made his choices, and I greatly admire him for making them. The work deserves recognition just for that. His aims were daring, and he manages to balance an undertaking that threatens to implode from the beginning, and he makes it to the end without losing me. Intellectually it comes off reasonably sound for me - I can accept being left with more questions than answers, and probably prefer it that way - but emotionally, I feel ripped off, and that's where the experience matters to me.
The worst thing is that, having been shortlisted for the Pulitzer and sold many copies, it will encourage attention-wanters with typewriters to attempt the same thing, and no doubt publishers will publish them, and we'll be stuck with many clumsier versions of the same thing. Hell, we already have magazines full of that kind of writing. The good thing is that his notes to readers, encouraging them to write down their memoirs, will no doubt lead to a great deal of cathartic exercise for many people, and maybe some great stories will be told. At the very least, it's a nice thing to do, encouraging people to tell their story after you've told yours, and it does encourage me. Dave Eggers is a self-critical cynic, and he got over himself enough to write his story, so why can't I? Thanks, Dave.
