Easy Dinero for a Good Cause
Written byPosted on November 30, 2006
Filed Under Eggers, Dave
The Rake has called for Eggers to offer an explanation for his critical flip-flop on Infinite Jest and, having failed to hear back from Pynchon for $49, he’s pledged to send a $49 check to 826 Valencia if Eggers responds (the check is pictured below).
In fact, I’ll go one step further. I’m in San Francisco. Eggers is in San Francisco. I will be happy to facilitate Mr. Eggers for an appearance on The Bat Segundo Show to talk about his book, What is the What, for a polite and civil conversation.
Except on one point.
At the end of the interview, he must respond on audio to the DFW question and he must respond to any followup questions by me, however tough and challenging, relating to this subject.
Come on, Mr. Eggers, this is easy money for a good cause. All you have to do is explain yourself. Or are litbloggers beneath your munificence?
[UPDATE: Matthew Tiffany has pledged another $49. That's $98, Mr. Eggers, and an opportunity to promote your book. All for an explanation!]
[UPDATE 2: The Rake has upped his sum to $109. Hell, this is starting to feel a bit like Jerry Lewis.]
[UPDATE 3: Dave Eggers has declined to appear on The Bat Segundo Show.]
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Books To Jump Up and Down Over
Beyond Heaving Bosoms by Sarah Wendell and Candy Tan. The famed writers behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books have written a very funny and thoughtful volume about romances, both Old Skool and New Skool. Here is a book that any smug and humorless literary manboy beating his flabby passive chest over Banville or Bolano should probably read pronto, if only for the distant possibility that he might get over himself. While the Choose Your Own Adventure segment at the end caused me to have a very disturbing dream involving Shelley Long (don't ask), Sarah and Candy did have me rethinking many of my own misperceptions when I wasn't busy laughing. They're not afraid to take on the New York Times Bok Review or even the groupthink within certain sectors of the romance community.
Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. This wild and highly enjoyable narrative involves two sisters (presumably, the third one was still being rented out by Chekhov), a hippie ex-junkie mother who lives with seventeen dogs, a murder, gambling, and libidinous Hollywood actresses who live in Woodstock. But this is the wonderful Maggie Estep we're talking here. And what seems at first like a quirky yarn becomes something unexpectedly moving about connectivity. What I love about Estep's work is the way that she'll juxtapose an extremely astute observation (now that you mention it, why do cab drivers always have somebody to talk with on the phone past midnight?) with an often outrageous story development.
Generosity by Richard Powers. It doesn't come out until September 29th, but Richard Powers's latest will have anyone committed to books reconsidering their literary fervor. I foresee some animosity from the vanilla critics hostile to idea-driven novels, but book bloggers, YouTube chroniclers, and MFAs would do well to plunge into this chance-taking narrative, which introduces vital questions about what the reader's relationship is with media, scientific dissection, and "creative nonfiction." Are we rats fleeing to happy cities? Or can we find the humanism within the purported plague?
Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon. Lennon is one of the most underrated fiction writers working today. Much as On the Night Plain proved that Lennon had a lot more in the toolbox than heartfelt (and often very funny) suburban satire, this slim but fascinating volume juxtaposes 100 small-town anecdotes -- arranged by category -- in a manner that reads, at times, like Nicholson Baker's passions for minutiae and, at other times, Stewart O'Nan's concern for psychological detail. The result is fiction that makes us wonder about whether one person's subjective view of particulars can entirely be trusted. This book never found a publisher in 2005. But thankfully, Graywolf has released it in the United States, along with Lennon's latest novel, The Castle.
Wonderful World by Javier Calvo. This wonderfully raucous volume has been completely ignored by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times. But it's probably one of the most delightful reading experiences I've had this year. Calvo cavalierly mashes up multiple genres and manages to mix up familial subtext with larger-than-life, almost cartoonish characters. (Indeed, one might argue that one mobster's penis is a character of its own in this sprawling novel.). This is not an easy thing to pull off, but Calvo makes it work. And it's helped immeasurably by Mara Faye Lethem's idiom-specific translation. (See longer post.)
The Means of Reproduction, Michelle Goldberg This thoughtful book tackles the complicated (and little discussed) subject of reproductive rights from numerous angles, which includes a number of unpleasant but necessary ones. The upshot is that there isn't a quick fix solution for declining birth rates and fundamentalist abuses. Just about every political faction has contributed to the friction. But you'll want to read this book anyway to refamiliarize yourself with the topic, but also to understand just what's occurred during the past several decades to get us where we are today. (See also podcast interview with Goldberg.)
- @LizB EMPIRE RECORDS was my Saved By the Bell. I can still be coaxed to defend the film. Rex Manning was the man. He was The Secret! 11 mins ago
- @LizB FYI: In pre-Internet times, I did major research on Rex Manning (and Maxwell Caulfield), leading a group of EMPIRE RECORDS acolytes. in reply to LizB 12 mins ago
- @KatMeyer This may confuse matters further. :) http://bit.ly/12kSbS in reply to KatMeyer 23 mins ago
- More updates...
Contact Ed by email.
Or send materials to:
315 Flatbush Avenue, #231
Brooklyn, NY 11217
Or send materials to:
315 Flatbush Avenue, #231
Brooklyn, NY 11217
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Eggers is not my thing, but…are you serious? You’re demanding answers as to why he gave a conflicted review to something he later decided had stood the test of time? This is the most ridiculous attempt at stirring up a scandal I’ve seen outside of an election cycle. It makes all the bloggers involved look like a bunch of high school kids. Please, stop.
The scandal is being stirred up for a good cause. C’mon. Does one need a license to be ridiculous for charity? Don’t be such a humorless tightwad.
Now that I’ve had a chance to read the reivew and the intro, I don’t know why people are seeing them as so different. The review is a bit mixed, but it also calls the book “brilliant” and says it’s well worth any frustration.
The intro puffs things out a bit, but all the things Eggers finds praiseworthy in the review are reiterated in the intro. It’s like Dazed & Confused. The first time I saw it, I like it, but I also thought it came off like amateur hour, glacial pacing, terrible dramatic structure and some wretched editing.
Years later, those flaws look like virtues to me and it’s a movie I could watch over and over.
Who hasn’t had criticisms of something melt away in the face of time?
If I thought these guys were having a lark, I wouldn’t see them as so pathetic, but they’re not. It’s meanspirited. It’s an attempt at a takedown, a way to be able to shame Eggers no matter what he does because that’s what they’d like to do, take the popular and successful kid down a notch. I love the voices of the blogosphere and can’t imagine a culture without them anymore, but this is one of those cases where the worst parts of the phenomenon are on display.
May, you’ve expressed it perfectly. I enjoy a takedown as much as anyone, but when people start demanding that the subject respond to the takedown, it becomes a little bit of a persecution thing. I prefer Ed in his more impish mode.
I don’t really think it needs to be called a takedown or a persecution. I would call it a curiosity. People are interested. They want to understand. It may benefit the literary community to understand how one’s take on a work of art, naturally, changes over time.
Does Eggers really need a facillitator to get on a podcast? I’ll have him on NY public access and won’t demand he respond to anything, except how to rebuild a 72 Nova engine.
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