Review: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Originally posted July 26, 2014
Before I started reading A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, my main fear was that it would be too “precious” or “pretentious” for me. The title itself could be taken in two ways. Either the author, Dave Eggers, was deluded or arrogant enough to call his memoir as such, or he was being sarcastic; he knew his work was anything but a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, and he trusted that his readers would get this and understand the joke.
It didn’t take me long to realize that the second option is the correct one. AHWOSG (as it refers to itself in the book) deals with a painful topic: how the author’s parents both died of cancer within days of each other, and how at twenty-one years of age, he was left to take care of his eight-year-old brother, Toph. The book begins with his mother dying and bleeding out on their family couch—interspersed with flashbacks of his sister finding their father collapsed and dying—yet, even with such a heavy introduction, there is already a kind of desperate humor and manic optimism that is present all throughout. It is as if to deal with the pain, the author makes fun of himself and his family. He laughs to keep himself from crying.
In terms of non-fiction, the author is upfront about the book being as creative as it can get. In its preface (yes, it has a preface), he admits many parts have been fictionalized. Dialogue has been understandably so, but there are also several cases where the characters break the fourth wall and talk about the book itself. Characters had their names changed and their personalities and situations combined. Locations were switched and time compressed in order to improve the flow and coherence of the book.
The book itself is composed of eleven chapters that, unlike traditional memoirs, are episodic and non-linear: techniques more commonly used in fiction and in cinema. Aside from the preface, there is a “Rules and Suggestions for Enjoyment of This Book” page, an Acknowledgements section, and a Table of Contents. In fact, there is so much filler before the beginning of the book that it almost seems as if the author is embarrassed about what he wrote and is discouraging you from reading. (In my edition, there is also an upside-down appendix at the back, where Eggers explains he wrote those as a stalling mechanism, since it was almost too painful for him to begin writing the first few chapters.)
In the “Rules or Suggestions” page, it actually suggests that you only read the first three to four chapters. To quote: “That gets you to page 123 or so, which is a nice, novella sort of length. Those first four chapters stick to one general subject, something manageable, which is more than what can be said for the book thereafter…. The book thereafter is kind of uneven.” This passage is a perfect example of the author’s self-awareness and self-deprecation about his work. It’s true that the first four chapters are particularly strong and cohesive, as they deal with the death of his parents, his and his siblings’ move to San Francisco from Chicago, and he and his brother Toph settling into their new life together. The rest of the book is not exactly uneven but just more rambling and all over the place in terms of topics. It talks about the author’s twentysomething struggles and his growing up journey, even as he acts the part of the de facto grown-up for his brother’s sake.
I felt like I could relate to the book on several levels. First, it was primarily set in San Francisco or around the Bay Area, where my parents and eldest sister live and which I lived in myself for roughly two years, so I feel like I know the setting pretty well. Second, a big theme of the book is the close relationship between Dave and his baby brother Toph. I too am very close to my older sisters, who are five and ten years older than me and, in some ways, it feels like they raised me. In that situation, I am definitely the Toph of the family. Third, my mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer when I was twelve years old. She survived, thank God, and is alive and well, but I remember quite distinctly the hospitals, the smells, the chemotherapy, the general atmosphere of fear and ickiness. Even the “half-moon receptacle” Dave talks about in the book, which we referred to as a “kidney basin,” is something I am very familiar with.
The book has several themes and symbols (which are actually cheekily listed in the preface). The one which stuck out to me the most was the author’s wavering between feeling guilty and ashamed for exposing his family’s secrets and “exploiting” his parents’ deaths, and his extolling the virtues of sharing his experiences with everyone and purging the toxicity out of his system. This inner conflict between keeping secrets and being honest—to the point where you bleed out onto the page—seems like a recurring struggle with memoir writers.
With all of the book’s self-proclaimed “gimmicks, bells, and whistles,” and all the tangents and surreal imaginings the author gets into, this book is likely not going to appeal to no-nonsense readers and people who have their feet firmly rooted in the sensory world. As someone who lives a lot of my life in my head as well, though, I found it refreshing and relatable. It was like the lid of the author’s head was lifted off, and we were privileged with a glimpse into the inner chaos swirling within. The part where Dave goes out to a party in the city and convinces himself that Toph has been murdered by the bohemian baby-sitter is both hilarious and heartbreakingly demonstrative of the irrational fears and worries we all experience for a loved one we are responsible for.
The book is surrounded by death (which of course, it is also fully aware of). The ending comes abruptly as a kind of death as well. Dave is quitting Might, the satirical magazine he co-founded, and relocating to New York with Toph. He alludes to the writing of the book as a way to self-destruct and have the world finally see him and judge him for who he is. But what he seems to be aware of and is ever so subtly hinting to us readers is that death is an inevitable and even transformative power in our lives. In death, we shed our old skins to move on to the new, and it is from the ashes of our past selves that we can rise like a phoenix into the brilliant, sunset sky depicted on the book’s cover.
