Heartbreaking, indeed. Genius? Not so much.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, by Dave Eggers. What a disappointment. I had heard a lot of positive things about this autobiographical book over the last few years, prompting me to pick it up at my favorite used book sale. The introduction was quite promising, as Eggers provides the reader with instructions on how to read the book which I found to be pretty amusing. However, the bulk of the book is too long, at times variously maudlin and boring, occasionally funny, but on the whole a trial to get through. Eggers appears to be both pretentious and self-deprecating, but it's hard to determine when, and the effort isn't worth the dubious rewards.

Eggers' parents both died of cancer when he was in his early twenties. They left him, an older sister and brother and his younger brother Christopher (Toph). The care and guardianship of Toph fell to Dave, and much of the book is about Eggers' stint in loco parentis for Toph. While it's a sad scenario, I found that I had to force myself to feel sympathy for the Eggers children. This account didn't do the situation justice. The narrative felt uneven, as if at times Eggers alternately doesn't care and then panders for the reader's sympathy.

The book pulls on the heartstrings a bit, as it cannot help but do - a young single man raising his younger brother largely on his own - but these are rare moments. The reader sees the two having fun, dealing with their parents' passing, but then Eggers mixes into this his struggles with publishing Might magazine - a kooky hipster rag - various twentysomething antics of the guys 'n' gals variety, a veritable discourse about his love/hate affair with MTV's Real World (which seemed alarmingly dated to me), and a bunch of other crap. It's a narrative with an unpleasant syncopation; a discordant arrangement.

This is a book which caused me to roll my eyes every time I took it up. I couldn't wait to finish it simply so I could start reading something else. One word to sum up this disaster? Annoying. I would avoid this one.

Eggers also widely employs a writing pet peeve of mine - pervasive profanity throughout. Now I'm no prude: profanity has a natural and reasonable place in dialogue, both actual and written, and is even effective used sparingly otherwise (its rarity emphasizing its power as verbiage) but I find its persistent use in prose outside of dialogue to be lazy, cheap, uninteresting and uninspiring.

But what the fuck do I know?