 |  |  |  |  |
current Monday
Report below!
This week's report by Noah Cicero
How We Are Hurting…a review of the Dave’s latest
Dave Egger’s book How We Are Hungry is a collection of short
stories that are lame, boring, have only superficial rich people as
characters, a lot big words no one ever uses, sentences that sound
good but make no sense, and uses geographic locations all over the
world but most of the action could have taken place in any town in
America.
The binding of the book is black leather, no blurbs, an elastic strap
on the back (for what reason I have no clue), a ribbon bookmarker,
and a McSweeney’s hippogriff engraved into the leather. Joanna
Rose from The Oregonian said, “One may not be able to reliably
judge a book by its cover, but sometimes the cover is right. This one
is rare-looking, and rich and important-looking. It looks like a
classic.” That is incredible logic; if a book has a nice binding, it must
be a classic. Maybe next time the ULA’s communal lit-zine Slush Pile
comes out the binding should be made of gold and Slush Pile spelled
out with pearls and rubies.
How We Are Hungry costs $22 because of this ‘classic’ binding. It is
fitting that only the upper class owns this book because all the
characters are extremely rich. I said “owns” and not “reads”
because to Dave Eggers and his fans it is more important to own a
certain book than to have actually read and understood it.
The characters of How We Are Hungry have no real development
except that they are rich. All of his females are useless and their
only desire is to get married, and the males don’t really exist. If they
do exist they are only stock characters. In the story, “Climbing to the
Window, Pretending to Dance,” there is a brother named Fish who is
rich and pays for his brother Adam’s hospital bills, because his
brother Adam keeps trying to kill himself. You never find out why
Adam keeps trying to kill himself. Eggers’s characters have no
motivation for their behavior except attention, but why they want the
attention Eggers never says.
The hunger Eggers is talking about is the hunger for attention. All his
characters are rich people who have everything, can travel around
the world anytime they want, own horses, have full health coverage,
no bills, and don’t have to worry about anything material in the world
so they fiend for attention. I don’t know how this book could be
published, get good reviews, and even be written in 2004 America
while the country has so many different problems. This is what the
literary establishment hands the American people, a $22 book that
has only attention-starved rich people as characters. No fucking
wonder reading is down!
Here are some stories analyzed, because unlike the prostitutes that
review Eggers’s book who don’t supply any evidence for their
claims, there will be empirical evidence for his ineptitude at writing
about anything.
“Notes for a Story of a Man Who Will Not Die Alone”: This is a story
about a narcissistic old rich man who doesn’t want to die just around
his family but yearns for attention so much he gets his characterless
son and a characterless female to rent out a baseball stadium for him
to die in and spectators to watch.
“There Are Some Things He Should Keep To Himself”: It is just the
title and five blank pages. I suppose Eggers thought he was really
clever there. He reminds me of a six year old who makes a mud pie
in the sandbox and says to his mom, “Look, look, look mom, look
what I did.” The mother looks at the mud pie and says, “That’s nice
Dave.” Little Eggers is so happy because he got someone’s attention.
His writing is that of a six year old with a savant’s vocabulary. What
kind of asshole would charge $22 for a book with a short story with
no words?
“About the Man Who Began Flying After Meeting Her”: A story about
two rich people who have lots of leisure time. The guy wants to go
hang gliding, parachuting, and all kinds of other flying activities. If
the girl leaves him, he’ll find another girl but he won’t fly with her, he’
ll find other expensive leisure activities to do with her. I have no idea
what the point of that story was.
“Your Mother and I”: This is Eggers political manifesto. It addresses
certain problems like voting turnouts, claiming that voter turnouts
would be better if there were internet and phone voting. You can see
how out of touch Eggers is. People don’t vote because they are
disillusioned and sure that no matter who they vote for, it won’t
matter. It’s not the drive to the fire station that turns them off. Phone
voting? We’re having enough problems with paper and touch
screens. The leader of our country shouldn’t be chosen like the
winner of American Idol.
He speaks of electric cars, AIDS, windmills, etc. He demands for a
complete overhaul of American institutions. But doesn’t he know
that he and his institution are one of the many problems facing
America, and to have a complete overhaul of society (like he
demands) he too would be overhauled and thrown in the compost
heap of backward American notions?
“After I Was Thrown in the River”: Ken Foster of The Journal News
said about this story, “Through the protagonist, and the story’s
improbably moving conclusion, we learn the secret of what God is,
and, movingly, acceptance of the evil that men do, here on earth.”
“After I Was Thrown in the River” is about a dog that keeps running
and running and running. Ninety percent of the verbs in the story is
the word running. I guess Eggers thought he was clever there too.
The story goes nowhere and doesn’t make any sense. Ken Foster
referred to the end of the story. The dog dies and goes to heaven or
something absurd like that, and realizes that God is the Sun. The
reason life is so horrible is because people don’t know that God is
the Sun. Eggers, with his divine intelligence is saying that the
Children’s War, slavery, racism, steel and coal miners working for
script, both World Wars, and all the horrible shit that humans have
ever done to each other would never have happened if they just
read his $22 book and knew God was the Sun. All the psychological
studies, scientific advances, political theories, and philosophy ever
written can be thrown away and discarded, because Dave Eggers
has figured it all out. All we need to do is get the poor-ass world to
buy Eggers’s $22 book and there will be a utopia in no time.
A few lines that must be analyzed...
“The man at home feels this way too often. He feels tunneled,
wrapped, desiccated,” from “What It Means When a Crowd.” Every
time Eggers tries to write a sentence about normal people it comes
out absurd and shows how out of touch he is. I would like to do a
survey where regular working men are asked if they feel tunneled,
wrapped, and desiccated. They would reply: “I feel scared about
losing my job, paying my bills, and what the hell is desiccated?” I
assume that Eggers, like all people who have not matured past age
six, assumes that everyone thinks like him.
“The fact that he was alive to hear the suffering meant that he was
meant to stop it,” from “Climbing to the Window, Pretending to
Dance.” Egger contradicts his own book. He tells you to accept the
world because God is the Sun, then tells you to change it.
“Where the waves were small and forgiving and the water was
warm, like the inside of a plum,” from “The Only Meaning of Oil Wet
Water.” Here Eggers sacrifices making sense for alliteration.
“Refusing to let go of the night,” from “The Only Meaning of Oil Wet
Water.” That is as bad as it can get. Six Dollar Harlequin novels put
out better lines than that.
Two lines from the reviews analyzed.
“It’s all condensed and crafted, worked, that’s what fiction is,” said
Stephen Smith from The Globe and Mail. Yes, you can tell when you
read Eggers writing that he spent at least five minutes on every line
to make sure it sounded pretty, didn’t make sense, and conveyed
nothing. At the same if you were a moron you would be convinced
that he knew what he was doing was great because there was
alliteration, a lot of big words, and a story without words. Eggers
works so hard on his lines to disguise that he doesn’t know anything
about psychology, politics, history, or writing. The most well
developed character is the dog because that is how mature Eggers
is mentally, a dog.
“In this sense, Eggers is beginning to resemble this generation’s
Jack Kerouac,” said John Freeman from the San Francisco
Chronicle. That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. What fucking
generation is John Freeman talking about?
“He wants to impress her in some way everyday and wants to want
to impress her,” from “On Wanting to Have Three Walls Up Before
She gets Home.” He said it himself. This book came from his own
psychological need to impress other people. The people who say
they enjoyed this book bought it because they have a psychological
need to impress. To be even a little innovative implies the reviewers
won’t like it. That is why the book is so lame, inoffensive, weak,
unentertaining, and shitty. Because Eggers has no balls, is out of
touch with reality, and has only one desire, to get people to look at
his mud pie.
Without doubt if Urban Hermitt, Steve Kostecke, and Crazy Carl
Robinson and many others had a book of their short stories
distributed to every store and got the same amount of publicity as
Eggers they would out sell Eggers by a shit load. That is what really
fucking pisses me off.
……………………
Noah Cicero is author of The Human War, available from Fugue State Press.
GO HERE TO ENTER THE MONDAY REPORT BOX.
