Because You Want to Book Club #1: "How We Are Hungry"

This is the beginning of a series where I review books I have had to double back over time and read now. Mostly since I haven’t had as much time to read as I used to; now that I have all the time in the world, it is time to do some serious catching up.

Dave Eggers has always been a hit or miss author with me. I admire him on so many literary levels, but on a fundamental level, I simply can’t relate to him in any way. I appreciate his ability to make something out of nothing. It was that very ability that caused his debut memoir “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” to be such a runaway best-seller and cultural cornerstone. But much like the films of Wes Anderson (“Rushmore,” “The Darjeeling Limited,” and for this example I am about to give in particular “The Royal Tennenbaums”) and the music of Andrew McMahon (lead singer of Jack’s Mannequin and former lead singer of emo stalwarts Something Corporate), Eggers often lets his own personal privilege get in the way of his characters; even if the character is the writer himself. Eggers, Anderson, and McMahon all come from a rich white upbringing and it shows through in their writing, films, and songs, respectively. At their best, they create universal themes that people can easily relate to. At their worst, you get the sense that they want to be admonished just because leading a blessed life is just so damned hard. It can even seem like, at times, there are no other people in the world rather than the rich denizens of Orange County where they all grew up.

I loved “Genius” because it was so real and painful, but I could never quite relate to such a privileged and well off family no matter how much they might have suffered. “You Shall Know Our Velocity” was a crashing bore in which class and privilege are relied on far too heavily and made me not want to give him another chance no matter how good of a writer he was. “Velocity” played like someone with an overly severe case of taking oneself far too seriously while suffering from rich white guilt. Ever last smarmy word dripped with the thought that Eggers wanted a medal for his allegory. I use the word allegory because while “Velocity” was a fictional story, coming off of “Genius” it was impossible for me to separate his characters from the man himself. It didn’t help that I found both of the characters so loathsome that I couldn’t have cared less what happened to them. I still managed to give “What is the What” a try and I am glad I did. At points it moved quite slowly, but in the end was a well-written and well-balanced affair. “What” showcases Eggers at his best; it is when he is able to step outside himself and place himself almost directly into the shoes of another person that is not at all like he is. It was reading this book last year that made me go back and read his collection of short stories titled How We Are Hungry.

The first stories are regrettably quite forgettable and slight with only a small amount of entertainment value in the third story “The Meaning of the Oil Wet Water,” which is actually a continuation of sorts of “Velocity.” The rest of the collection, however, is solid gold and showcases some of Eggers’ best work.

“Climbing the Window, Pretending to Dance” is a simple yet powerful story of a man incapable of understanding his cousin’s repeated suicide attempts. “Quiet” is a story so shocking and atypical that one might have a hard time believing Eggers could come up with something so unsettling and off-putting. “Your Mother and I” injects some much needed humour into the collection. “Notes for a Story of a Man Who Will Not Die Alone” is exactly what he says it is, but it is so well done that the actually story isn’t necessary.

Two of Eggers’ more familiar works are also included in the collection. The story “Up the Mountain Coming Down Slowly” features an interesting perspective on a vacation that probably shouldn’t have been taken in the first place. This tale of a woman who feels obligated to take a non-refundable trek up Mount Kilimanjaro to appease her sister plays like the ultimate pissed off travelogue. The book’s closer “After I Was Thrown in the River and Before I Drowned” has always been my favourite work of Eggers, and its inclusion here is delightful. Eggers takes numerous writing conventions from using short fragmented sentences to long, rambling, almost incoherent paragraphs to tell the story of a puppy who is quickly coming of age. Eggers arranges his different elements into a roiling symphony that reaches a boiling point before its over, but by the end reassures us quite gently and movingly that in the end things generally work out as they should.

In the end, Eggers tends to keep his class privilege to himself and creates some of his best work to date. I can’t mark off too heavily that the first few stories aren’t terribly successful, and on top of that, with the exception of “Water,” they are all brief making the start slow, but not deathly.

Grade: B+

Coming Soon: Roger Ebert’s “Your Movie Sucks,” “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” by Lynne Truss, “Embroideries” by Marjane Satrapi, “The Know It All” by A.J. Jacobs, “The Raw Shark Texts” by Steven Hall, “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy, and many more, hopefully.