A Heartbreaking Work by a Staggering Jackass I cannot stand Dave Egger's work. My brain goes into a tailspin every time an intelligent person recommends his work. I'm not certain if this is due to my upbringing in the farmland of southern Michigan, or my early exposure to Calvinism, but any book with the title A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius isn't going to get far with me. And I haven't been able to get very far with it. After three tries I haven't made it past the halfway point.
But David Sedaris has this to say about Eggers (from an interview in Paper Jam):
In conversation, Sedaris is rather like his writing: funny, sharp-witted, but seldom really mean. Except when the subject moves to a certain young writer whose first book's back cover featured an admiring blurb from Sedaris himself. An act for which he received little thanks. [base "]Dave Eggers is a huge pain in the ass. A huge pain in the ass,[per thou] says Sedaris. [base "]I went on a tour last year and he had just been on one before me, so I was visiting a lot of the same bookstores he'd been to. And I would go to stores that were actively unselling his book. Like, someone would go to the counter with the book [A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius] and the staff would say, [OE]Actually, that book's not very good. No one likes that book. You should read this instead.[base '] Because Dave Eggers would have been in that book store the week before and yelled at the people who worked there and treated them horribly. He's a horrible person[sigma]but he's a really good writer.[per thou]
If you are a Sedaris fan, check the whole article out. If you don't know who he is, go and find a copy of Me Talk Pretty One Day.
6:10:04 PM 
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