A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
There was life before Dave Eggers? No! A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius was a great big American mess of a story, written and read in simpler times. Although bristling with all the latest attitudes, it was as straightforwardly pious as The Pilgrim's Progress.
Six years have passed since the book came out. Christopher Eggers, the treasure whom the narrator guards with his life, must be approaching the end of his high school career, if he's not already in college. But he will always be eight years old in literature. His brother's impassioned guardianship has pinned him like a captured butterfly.
I didn't know how good things were. We none of us did.
Reading Matter>Books on the Side>A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.
Comments
Rereading your comments was tantamount, but not equal, to rereading ASWOHG (our old familiar acronym when we were reading and discussing this book when it came out). My own distance from Tom's death, and my new experiences since then with my cousin, my mother, my dog, and recently my close contemporary, and my own sense of heroism overseeing my mother's demise, were all provoked from reading your thoughts about this tragicomic elegy. Thanks for refreshing, and elucidating, a unique piece of writing.
Posted by: Susan | August 17, 2006 08:46 AM