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A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius | Introduction

Dave Eggers was one of the founding editors of a now defunct magazine called Might. During its relatively short life, the magazine poked fun at everything. That same sense of humor can be found in Eggers’s memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000). Despite the fact that Eggers was writing a story about his life, he was simultaneously making fun of the accepted form of memoir writing. Eggers leaves nothing untouched in his book, including the copyright page, which reads, “This is a work of fiction.” He goes on to explain, that, like anyone undertaking memoir, he could not possibly remember all the exact details of every act and conversation that he was involved in. Thus, in reading Eggers’s book, which is at times very sad, very disturbing, and very funny, readers are continually forced to ask themselves: Is this section true? Or is this the part that is fiction?

The sad parts of Eggers’s memoir are unmistakable. Eggers loses both his parents while he is in his early twenties. His parents die within weeks of one another and Eggers is left with a young brother to raise at a time when Eggers is not fully developed himself. The disturbing parts of his memoir involve friends and relatives who suffer mental depressions and threaten suicide. Others become ill and die. Some meet with accidents, such as falling several floors and surviving, but with handicaps. As for the funny parts, they run throughout the story as Eggers exposes his wacky inner thoughts, which are often laced with paranoia.

Though this is not a work of pure fiction, Eggers has been hailed by many critics as the twenty-first century’s version of J. D. Salinger, known around the world for his novel The Catcher in the Rye (1951). Eggers is reminiscent of Salinger’s protagonist Holden Caulfield, a character that is often angry about everything and everyone in his world.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius Summary

Eggers is home from college as the story begins. He and his sister Beth are tending to their mother, who is in the last throes of her bout with cancer. They have promised not to take her back to the hospital. She has been sick for a long time. Eggers’s father has just recently died. Their mother quickly deteriorates after the death of her husband, and Beth and Eggers take her to the hospital, where she dies.

After the funeral, the siblings (Dave, Bill, Beth, and Toth) pack up and sell the house. Beth returns to law school. Bill returns to Southern California. Dave and Toth find a house not far from Beth in Berkeley and settle down.

Getting Toth registered in school is the first time Eggers feels the full load of parenting fall on his shoulders. He does not like having to explain that he is Toth’s brother and not his father and tends to make up stories when other parents ask him questions. Eggers also goes through transitions when he realizes how sloppily he lives, leaving dishes unwashed and food out for long periods of time and generally having a very disorganized and dirty home. It actually takes one of Toth’s friends, asking how they can live in such a mess, for Eggers to realize that things have to change. Having to raise Toth makes Eggers take stock of some of his old habits.

Despite working temporary jobs to make ends meet, Eggers has to be available to take Toth to school and pick him up afterward. Eggers is almost constantly paranoid that something disastrous is going to happen to Toth whenever his younger brother is out of his sight. Therefore, Eggers limits his social life and hangs out with Toth for fun. The two brothers seem to get along very well, making good companions for one another. They make up silly games that they repeat over and over. One of Eggers's favorites is to tell Toth that the baseball hat that he wears smells like urine. This starts a familiar argument. Like a typical father, Eggers worries about Toth when the boy joins a baseball team and cannot seem to hit the ball. Eggers buys him a lighter bat and... » Complete A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius Summary