 "A heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" is a book with which you Manayunkers may be familiar...This article is about the author, Dave Eggers, who talks about his work since his first novel along with some of his upcoming work, including a Spike Jonze movie, an adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are.
Dave Eggers talks about production by procrastination, how understanding book-selling can empower a writer, and what it's like to be the head of a publishing empire that everyone has an opinion about.
publishing his memoir "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" in 2000, Dave Eggers has been deconstructed as much for who he is as for what he writes. This, of course, is something of an inevitability when you find fame through exposing yourself through writing, through demanding readers to stare, to crawl inside and look around, no matter how awkward it ends up feeling. The book's extraordinary success allowed Eggers to turn his literary magazine McSweeney's -- once slapstick and satirical, now decidedly more serious and mainstream -- into what's often referred to as an indie publishing empire: There's a publishing house, a monthly magazine about books (the Believer), a bicoastal tutoring center for kids. Bring up Eggers today and you're supposed to have something to say about all this. You're supposed to have an opinion, a stance, a theory.
But five years on and let's be real: Isn't this starting to feel tiring, repetitive, cloying, misguided, weird seeming? One of the many pleasures in reading "How We Are Hungry," Eggers' recent collection of stories, is that it reminds you of his abilities as a writer. He can dazzle, and at his best he can move effortlessly between classic storytelling and the more experimental. There's a sense of maturity to the book, and so it seemed like a fine time to check in on the author -- to talk about the collection, about how his attitude toward writing and publishing has changed since 2000. (For some reason, if only because Eggers is the sort of person who tends to inspire assumptions, it feels relevant to state that we didn't know each other before I interviewed him, though I have written for the Believer.)
In conversation Eggers is funny, chatty, uninhibited, and a true master of the extended tangent. We had a long telephone conversation, very long, probably much longer than either of us realized, one that took place with Eggers driving, then talking in a parking lot for another half hour. Among the topics discussed: Eggers' take on short fiction, his adaptation of "Where the Wild Things Are" for Spike Jonze -- and, yes, the culture of McSweeney's and the culture that's chosen to define itself in opposition to it.
One thing I've noticed about your stuff lately is that you seem to be willing to just put it out there at various stages and see how it sticks, which is something I think a lot of writers fear -- exposing the machinery before it's running smoothly. I guess I'm thinking of the novel in installments you were doing for Salon, and didn't you republish your novel "You Shall Know Our Velocity" with a different name ["Sacrament"] and ending?
No, it had a different middle, actually. Just some punctuation changes toward the end. But, yeah, the big difference was that I was not always that guy. I had become really precious. I was a terrible freelancer. Magazines would hate me because I'd take some assignment and then I would freeze up, because I'd be like, "Well, they're not going to print it the way I want it to be. What am I doing? I shouldn't have taken this stupid assignment in the first place! It's never going to be as good as it should!" And then I would just obsess forever and then when it was due, I would back out. I did that probably a dozen times. And then after that first book ["A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius"] came out, I froze up even more because I thought, "Oh, shit." It becomes a lot harder. I wrote on my own for about a year and a half and came up with a 600-page book that I never published. It was good for me to write -- I don't think anyone else would be interested in it. It was after "Velocity" that I really started loosening up.
Steve [Elliott, author of "Happy Baby," which Eggers edited] has been somebody that's been important to me in terms of a colleague whose work I like a lot, and he doesn't overthink everything. He doesn't overthink stuff from a publishing or career aspect. Also, I need deadlines, just like everybody else, especially coming from magazines, newspapers, and stuff like that. I need daily or weekly deadlines to get stuff done, or I continue to do things and not go off on a year of unproductivity. |
"A heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" is a book with which you Manayunkers may be familiar...This article is about the author, Dave Eggers, who talks about his work since his first novel along with some of his upcoming work, including a Spike Jonze movie, an adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are.
Dave Eggers talks about production by procrastination, how understanding book-selling can empower a writer, and what it's like to be the head of a publishing empire that everyone has an opinion about.
publishing his memoir "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" in 2000, Dave Eggers has been deconstructed as much for who he is as for what he writes. This, of course, is something of an inevitability when you find fame through exposing yourself through writing, through demanding readers to stare, to crawl inside and look around, no matter how awkward it ends up feeling. The book's extraordinary success allowed Eggers to turn his literary magazine McSweeney's -- once slapstick and satirical, now decidedly more serious and mainstream -- into what's often referred to as an indie publishing empire: There's a publishing house, a monthly magazine about books (the Believer), a bicoastal tutoring center for kids. Bring up Eggers today and you're supposed to have something to say about all this. You're supposed to have an opinion, a stance, a theory.
But five years on and let's be real: Isn't this starting to feel tiring, repetitive, cloying, misguided, weird seeming? One of the many pleasures in reading "How We Are Hungry," Eggers' recent collection of stories, is that it reminds you of his abilities as a writer. He can dazzle, and at his best he can move effortlessly between classic storytelling and the more experimental. There's a sense of maturity to the book, and so it seemed like a fine time to check in on the author -- to talk about the collection, about how his attitude toward writing and publishing has changed since 2000. (For some reason, if only because Eggers is the sort of person who tends to inspire assumptions, it feels relevant to state that we didn't know each other before I interviewed him, though I have written for the Believer.)
In conversation Eggers is funny, chatty, uninhibited, and a true master of the extended tangent. We had a long telephone conversation, very long, probably much longer than either of us realized, one that took place with Eggers driving, then talking in a parking lot for another half hour. Among the topics discussed: Eggers' take on short fiction, his adaptation of "Where the Wild Things Are" for Spike Jonze -- and, yes, the culture of McSweeney's and the culture that's chosen to define itself in opposition to it.
One thing I've noticed about your stuff lately is that you seem to be willing to just put it out there at various stages and see how it sticks, which is something I think a lot of writers fear -- exposing the machinery before it's running smoothly. I guess I'm thinking of the novel in installments you were doing for Salon, and didn't you republish your novel "You Shall Know Our Velocity" with a different name ["Sacrament"] and ending?
No, it had a different middle, actually. Just some punctuation changes toward the end. But, yeah, the big difference was that I was not always that guy. I had become really precious. I was a terrible freelancer. Magazines would hate me because I'd take some assignment and then I would freeze up, because I'd be like, "Well, they're not going to print it the way I want it to be. What am I doing? I shouldn't have taken this stupid assignment in the first place! It's never going to be as good as it should!" And then I would just obsess forever and then when it was due, I would back out. I did that probably a dozen times. And then after that first book ["A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius"] came out, I froze up even more because I thought, "Oh, shit." It becomes a lot harder. I wrote on my own for about a year and a half and came up with a 600-page book that I never published. It was good for me to write -- I don't think anyone else would be interested in it. It was after "Velocity" that I really started loosening up.
Steve [Elliott, author of "Happy Baby," which Eggers edited] has been somebody that's been important to me in terms of a colleague whose work I like a lot, and he doesn't overthink everything. He doesn't overthink stuff from a publishing or career aspect. Also, I need deadlines, just like everybody else, especially coming from magazines, newspapers, and stuff like that. I need daily or weekly deadlines to get stuff done, or I continue to do things and not go off on a year of unproductivity.
