A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius; A Memoir Based on a True Story

by Dave Eggers

• ISBN13: 9780684863474
• ISBN10: 0684863472
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-02-17
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Summary

"Well, this was when Bill was sighing a lot. He had decided that after our parents died he just didn't want any more fighting between what was left of us. He was twenty-four, Beth was twenty-three, I was twenty-one, Toph was eight, and all of us were so tried already, from that winter. So when something world come up, any little thing, some bill to pay or decision to make, he would just sigh, his eyes tired, his mouth in a sorry kind of smile. But Beth and I...Jesus, we were fighting with everyone, anyone, each other, with strangers at bars, anywhere -- we were angry people wanting to exact revenge. We came to California and we wanted everything, would take what was ours, anything within reach. And I decided that little Toph and I, he with his backward hat and long hair, living together in our little house in Berkeley, would be world-destroyers. We inherited each other and, we felt, a responsibility to reinvent everything, to scoff and re-create and drive fast while singing loudly and pounding the windows. It was a hopeless sort of exhilaration, a kind of arrogance born of fatalism, I guess, of the feeling that if you could lose a couple of parents in a month, then basically anything could happen, at any time -- all bullets bear your name, all cars are there to crush you, any balcony could give way; more disaster seemed only logical. And then, as in Dorothy's dream, all these people I grew up with were there, too, some of them orphans also, most but not all of us believing that what we had been given was extraordinary, that it was time to tear or break down, ruin, remake, take and devour. This was San Francisco, you know, and everyone had some dumb idea -- I mean, wicca? -- and no one there would tell you yours was doomed. Thus the public nudity, and this ridiculous magazine, and the Real World tryout, all this need, most of it disguised by sneering, but all driven by a hyper-awareness of this window, I guess, a few years when your muscles are taut, coiled up and vibrating. But what to do with the energy? I mean, when we drive, Toph and I, and we drive past people, standing on top of all these hills, part of me wants to stop the car and turn up the radio and have us all dance in formation, and part of me wants to run them all over."

Author Biography

Dave Eggers, a founding editor of Might magazine and contributor to many periodicals, is now the editor of McSweeney's, a quarterly journal. He lives in Brooklyn with his brother. This is not their dog.

Table of Contents

Rules and Suggestions for Enjoyment of This Book	vii
Preface to This Edition	ix
Contents	xvii
Acknowledgments	xix
Incomplete Guide to Symbols and Metaphors	xxxviii
PART I. Through the small Tall Bathroom Window, Etc.	1	(42)
Scatology
video games
blood
``blind leaders of the blind'' [Bible]
some violence
turtles
embarrassment, naked men
mapping
PART II. Please Look. Can you see Us, Etc.	43	(20)
California
ocean plunging, frothing
Little League, black mothers
rotation and substitution
hills, views, roofs, toothpicks
numbing and sensation
Johnny Bench
motion
PART III. The Enemies List, Etc.	63	(30)
Demotion
teachers driven before us
menu
plane crash
light
knife
Barry Gifford
State of the Family Room Address
half-cantaloupes
so like a fragile girl
old model, new model
Bob Fosse Presents
PART IV. Oh I Could be Going Out, Sure	93	(16)
But no. No no!
the weight
seven years one's senior, how fitting
potential sagging
John Doe
decay v. preservation
burgundy, bolts
PART V. Outside It's Blue-Black and Getting Darker, Etc.	109	(38)
Stephen, murderer, surely
The Bridge
Jon and Pontius Pilate
John, Moodie, et al.
Merchant Marine
lies
a stolen wallet
the 99th percentile
Mexican kids
lineups, lights
a trail of blood, and then silence, and then Russia
PART VI. When We Hear the News at First	147	(62)
What's In, What's Out
mailing lists
daughter of Charles Bronson, stunning
[some mild nudity]
Randy Stickrod
all the hope of history to date
an interview
death and suicide
mistakes
keg beer
Mr. T
Steve the Black Guy
a death faked, perhaps (the gray car)
a possible escape, via rope, of sheets
a broken door
betrayal justified
PART VII. Fuck It. Stupid Show, Etc.	209	(36)
Some bitterness, some calculation
Or anything that looks un-us
more nudity, still mild
of color, who is of color?
Chakka the Pakuni
hairy all the crotches are, bursting from panties and briefs
The Marina
The flying-object maneuver
drama or blood or his mouth foaming or
a hundred cymbals
would you serve them grapes? Would that be wrong?
``So I'm not allowed''
Details of all this will be good
PART VIII. We Can't Do Anything About the Excrement	245	(26)
Elliot Strunk
The Future
``Slacker? Not me,'' laughs Hillman
Meath: Oh yeah, we love that multicultural stuff
``Isn't that great?''
We fill out forms
a kindly Betty White sort
``a nightmare WASP utopia''
a sexual sort of lushness
There has been Spin the Bottle
``I don't know''
``Thank you, Jesus''
``I'm dying, Shal''
PART IX. Robert Urich Says No. We Were So Close	271	(30)
Laura Branigan, Lori Singer, Ed Begley, Jr.
to be thought of as smart, legitimate, permanent. So you do your little thing
a bitchy little thing about her
a fall
the halls, shabbily shiny, are filled with people in small clumps
that Polly Klaas guy giving me the finger at the trial
Adam, by association, unimpressive
PART X. Of Course It's Cold	301	(48)
The cold when walking off the plane
plans for a kind of personal archaeological orgy or something, from funeral homes to John Hussa, whose mom heated milk once, after Grizzly
weddings
a lesbian agnostic named Minister Lovejoy
Chad and the copies
leaf pile
another threat
of course she knows
wouldn't everyone be able to tell?
the water rising, as if under it already
PART XI. Black Sands Beach Is	349
No hands
down the hill, the walk
not NAMBLA
birthday, parquet
Skye
hot, poisoned blood
jail, bail, the oracle
more maneuvers
a fight
finally