Category / Eggers, Dave

by DrMabuse

Inside A Young Genius

While walking along Valencia St. a few nights ago, I came across a crumpled piece of paper on the sidewalk. I didn’t have any reading material on me, and, seeing that the paper was heavy bond stock, I somehow knew that this wasn’t your standard stray bit of trash. I unfolded the paper and began reading a story entitled “The Unforbidden is Compulsory, Forgotten and Altogether Tied Up in Importance Or, I Am Christ in the Literary Community.” Several paragraphs into the story, I detected a style that was familiar, recognizable in its aggravating repetitions and endless paragraphs. I couldn’t immediately place it. But, yesterday, when Salon posted the first installment of a political “satire” authored by Dave Eggers, I realized what I had in my hands.

I thought I’d post the pages I found here so that future scholars can appraise one of our finest authors. It should be noted that the partial manuscript was laser printed, and it included several handwritten remarks, which I have bolded and bracketed.

“Fuckers! Bastards!” said Dimitri [No, too Strangelove.] Sergei.

“What do you mean by that?” asked [Character Named After Adam Sandler Movie].

[Beef up dialogue — that is, if you can come up with anything. Jesus, can’t believe Talbot’s asking me to write political satire. Mine from Didion.]

They could do anything, everything and everything, everything and nothing. In a race like this, that, and everything in between, this race, this ongoing battle which you must understand, which you must feel between your toes and your fingers and your nostrils, you see, because it pulsates like many other races, an important race, a pivotal race, a race that destroys careers, there was no oversight. [Do I really understand politics? Pollack’s better at this. Well, who cares? Go with it, workhorse.] There was no feeling of outrage, no general sense that people were willing to screw each other, which was strange because most political races are corrupt in an easily understood way. And thank [insert Judeo-Chistian reference here for kids] for that. Sergei [good, keep name, funny] and [Should I go with Happy Gilmore or Little Nicky?], manager and head of special products for the Stuart Craspenmonstrodacousticolostomy campaign [Consider shortening funny name. Name should be long but not too long. Vendela tells me that Americans don’t elect people with long names, but she really doesn’t understand humor. Add to shopping list: buy shampoo for VV.], wouldn’t want any oversight or general sense of the limits of taste and smell. It was important that Craspenmonstrodacousticolostomy smell nice, that every voter who shook his hand knew that he smelled nice when they shook his hand. This was a filthy contest already, and most of the other candidates did not smell nice, even when they were shaking hands, and most of the filth was theirs but it could sometimes be picked up from other people and other candidates and other filthmongers [Chabon has stopped taking showers this week. Research for his new book. But will he see himself in this piece? Must not offend him or anyone else important. Consider revising.] and today would be no different, for today, this day, different from yesterday, but also a holiday — the Fourth of July, Independence Day, the time when they tossed out the firecrackers and threw burgers on a barbeque designed for barbecuing burgers, big burgers, the day the nation had been founded forgotten, bereft of its origins [Getting too political there, padre. Must keep it goofy and about nothing too important.] — was a day too crucial for cleansing, showering, basting, and perhaps ignoring deodorant. Today, at the Independence Day Walk Long and Tall and Arts Fair [Does this fly? Again, keep names goofy but vaguely discernible.], the Craspenmonstrodacousticolostomy campaign had to achieve nothing less than Total Absolute Ultimate Visual Dominance [Heidi hates this, says I should cut down. Maybe I can get one of those 826 V volunteers to salivate over this and come up with something.]. If, through the relentless creation and placement of Craspenmonstrodacousticolostomy balloons [Now I know the name’s bad. Consider shortening], posters, buttons, flyers, pom-poms, kites, banners, [Keep calling ANSWER and Greenpeace and find out what they use. If not, resort to high school rally memories.] and giant, tremendous Styrofoam hands [Keep this. Not sure why, but keep.], they could achieve ___________________ [Rework TAUVD concept.]

[Motherfucker. That scruffy intern didn’t get me my latte in two minutes. Note to self: Breathe, lots of soy and yoga, exercise in Marin, non-negative thinking, no snark. These masses cannot help themselves. They’ll join the ULA and bitch, but I’ll be the Pulitzer finalist. Reminder: add more names to my list.]

[Maybe start again from scratch.]

At this point, the writing becomes illegible. There is one additional comment at the bottom of the page, but it resembles more of a jagged line that trails up the right margin and forms into a crude picture of a penis at the top of a page.

I have no idea what any of this means, but perhaps some of you scholars who know Eggers’ work better than I do can offer a proper assessment.

by DrMabuse

The Eggers Rumor

Okay, folks, here’s what I know about the Eggers-Where the Wild Things Are connection.

I contacted Playtone Productions, the production company that’s behind Where the Wild Things Are. (I won’t dare reveal how I got the number.) I was told by Playtone that they could neither confirm nor deny that Eggers was involved on the screenplay, which suggests that Eggers is possibly involved, but no one is ready to make an official announcement as of yet. I asked if they could tell me if any writer was involved, and they told me, “We don’t give out that kind of information.” So what we have so far is a blank slate.

I then tried contacting Eggers’ office, but was caught in a voicemail labryinth and couldn’t get a live human being.

So at this point, we have nothing but rumors to base a conclusion on. The possibility exists that Eggers has written a screenplay, or is working on a screenplay. Since I’ve lambasted Eggers so much, I seriously doubt he or one of the 826 Valencia people will return the message I left in the general voicemail box. But perhaps someone closer to the fray can give us a definitive answer.

[UPDATE: Couldn’t get a live body at Good Machine. Tried Michel Gondry’s company, Partizan, but didn’t get anywhere, save for a helpful receptionist who replied, “Who is Dave Eggers?”]

by DrMabuse

Quickies

Infinity expert A.W. Moore compares David Foster Wallace’s Everything and More against two other books specializing in the subject and concludes that DFW is wrong: “The sections on set theory, in particular, are a disaster. When he lists the standard axioms of set theory from which mathematicians derive theorems about the iterative conception of a set, he gets the very first one wrong. (It is not, as Wallace says, that if two sets have the same members, then they are the same size. It is that two sets never do have the same members.)…He goes on to discuss Cantor’s unsolved problem, which I mentioned at the end of the previous paragraph. There are many different, equivalent ways of formulating the problem; Wallace gives four. The first and fourth are fine. The second, about whether the real numbers ‘constitute’ the set of sets of rational numbers, does not, as it stands, make sense. And the third, about whether the cardinal that measures the size of the set of real numbers can be obtained by raising 2 to the power of the smallest infinite cardinal, is simply wrong: we know it can.”

Heather Havrilesky interviews David Callahan, author of The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead.

Bernard Goldberg’s Arrogance has sold considerably short of sales. Retailers will get a half-price credit. And to think that a little less than two years ago, Goldberg was the man of the hour. All demagogues fall. When Ann Coulter?

Dave Eggers may write the script for Where the Wild Things Are for Spike Jonze. Oh no. (via Maud)

And if you haven’t seen this end-of-the-year wrapup yet with the bookblog cabal, check it out.

by DrMabuse

An Open Letter to Sara Bauer

Dear Young Woman Who Writes Snotty and Unfunny Open Letters for McSweeney’s:

The first moment I read you, I knew you were the same. The same as all those other passive-aggressive tidbits they seem to publish over there. Here, in the midst of (not amidst?) these publishing conglomerates, was independent prose. Look at her relentless second-person stance! Look at the soft snark extant within the piece, hypocritically unchecked from Julavits and Vida, addressed to no one in particular! How convenient! My partially digested dinner went up my esophagus and out my mouth to you.

I know it’s hard for you. Most McSweeney’s writers are thirtysomething Donald Barthleme wannabes who wouldn’t know funny if it bit them on the ass. I know you deal with wanting to get published, sans compensation, in this environment, and having to proffer the wonted generalizations. Your cowriters like you, but they receive the same rejection notices, because they really don’t understand you. They’ve read the same books you’ve read, they continually revere people like Julie Orringer as sages (“It is extremely important to hang out with non-writers and be interested in things that have nothing to do with writing.” Duh.), and fail to ponder the intellectual value of hunky authors and authoresses salivating over, rather than questioning seasoned veterans like Joan Didion.

You’re lonely. Writing’s a lonely racket. And you want to find someone who will publish you. But you’ve picked the wrong target, missy. That Chain Bookstore Worker’s probably just doing her job, working close to minimum wage, and using any leverage she can get in the smiles department to get through the day, to deal with smug fucks like you, because she’s quasi-literate at best and she’d like to read more. But there’s that second job to get to.

The world, you see, isn’t all about you after all. And should you ever publish a book, I will photocopy your little satire and distribute it amongst workers at Barnes & Noble and Borders. I will watch as they move your book away from a prime spot in the new books section and into some poorly lit corner. Because chain bookstore clerks are people and they do read. And I will laugh my ass off.

Sincerely,

Edward Champion

[1/21/06 UPDATE: Sara Bauer, incidentally, never contributed another piece to McSweeney’s again, nor contributed anywhere else. The only trace that I can find of her online is Ths online petition. Presumably, she has become a busy student at Butler University. Perhaps it had something to do with McSweeney’s online move from letters to bulleted lists. Bauer’s piece, however, isn’t the only time where the mean-spirited streak of McSweeney’s revealed itself. But I do hope that this post helped Bauer realize that snotty, mean-spirited humor, particularly of an elitist and insensitive stripe, is the mark of a one-trick pony.]