I have read and loved the hell out of A Heartbreaking Work, and the essayist is just as full of willful misunderstanding of that one as all the others. My reading was that Eggers was damn well aware of his own drama-queeniness and the operatic OTTness of his experiences as co-orphan quasi-parent to Toph.

He spent the entire book wrestling with just how down-to-the-marrow shitty, universe-wrecking the death of one's parents is; how terrifying it is to be responsible for a child when you're not quite done being one yourself; how scary it is to be hit with tidal waves of parental love and delight years before you're ready; how going through all that does make you feel decades older than your peers - and how, if you're a college-educated member of the snarky ironic hipster generation, you can't help rolling your eyes and gagging at your own operatic suffering even as you're succumbing to it, but what the hell other language can you use to describe it? And there you go, being ridiculous again. You can't get away from and can't bear the earnestness and the sap, and you can't find the language to convey any of it without becoming even more ridiculous to yourself. All the snippets the essayist picked to mock were, IIRC, more severely sneering toward himself than anyone else.

Not to mention that all but a small portion of the memoir takes place in San Francisco -- however, it does start in Brooklyn, and heaven forfend any post-post-postmodern literary essayist should miss a chance to piss all over Eggers and McSweeney's.

But really, this bit of praise tells me all I need to know about what sort of literature the essayist truly values:

Moreover, Lethem doesn’t pull punches. On the second page of The Fortress of Solitude, a kitten is accidentally killed while the protagonist’s mother smokes cigarettes.

Oooh! How daring and raw and ripe with unhealed trauma and rooted in gritty Brooklyn reality! I love Lethem to bits too, but those two sentences caused me to practically auto-deoculate with the @@ing.

My reading was that Eggers was damn well aware of his own drama-queeniness and the operatic OTTness of his experiences as co-orphan quasi-parent to Toph.

Uh oh. I love Heartbreaking Work, but I'm going to have trouble ever reading it again without thinking his brother is TOOOOOOOPH.

I agree one zillion percent with jz.

I agree one zillion percent with jz.

Awww! ::dances around the office::

Fortress of Solitude rocked my socks, but "You're making my side look stupid. Get off my side." No, wait. Noo Yawk: "Get off my side, you fucking fuck."ETA: That was to Essay Man, not JZ.

I finished American Gods last night. I was afraid it would be another "really like," but it turns out I loved it.

Oh, I loved The Dark Is Rising series, but I think it's becauseI read it as a kid, and it (and other books) are the reason I have such an interest in Celtic mythology and Arthurian legends.

I can't read it objectively; it's always a nostalgia read.

You know, I don't remember a huge amount of my childood and teen years vividly, so much to the extent that I have occasionaly wondered about memory repression/alien abduction/Satanic cult abuse (kidding! kinda!) but I think it's because I spent so much of my childhood out of body, in some other reality brought to me by books.

You, too, Erin? Not on the Dark Is Rising stuff, but on the lack of childhood memory.

I'm almost done with Storm Front. Harry Dresden is made of win.

P-C, now you need to read Anasi Boys! I do love American Gods, though. I will re-read right before (or, perhaps on) my Great American Road Trip that I swear will really truly happen someday.

You, too, Erin? Not on the Dark Is Rising stuff, but on the lack of childhood memory.

Same here. I mean, I have very clear memories of some stuff from childhood, but a lot of it is a haze of books I dove into.

P-C, now you need to read Anasi Boys!

Yep! I shoved another book ahead of it in the queue, but it's getting read soon.