How We Are Hungry by Dave Eggers

i’ve been a loud and proud eggers’ fan since my days as a young journalism student in wisconsin. see, when i was in college one of my profs. got me a subscripiton to ‘Might’ magazine. she said that this was the magazine i needed to write for once i graduated. eggers’ was an editor at Might. sadly, the magazine folded before i got my resume in there.

so anyway, i have dealt with the eggers’ naysayers for years. it seems every man i’ve dated in the past few years has disliked eggers. of course, i’m still single so there might be something there.

after reading [i]How We Are Hungry[/i], i can kinda see where the naysayers are coming from. when eggers’ isn’t trying to be the coolest kid in school, his stories sing. they are beautiful and heartbreaking in all the right ways.

when he’s trying to prove the whole indie-cred, cool writer thing, he’s fucking more annoying than anyone i’ve ever taken a writing class with. that includes the freakshow, the girl who tried too hard and the name dropper. that’s a hell of a lot of annoying to beat. but somehow, he manages.

maybe i’m too much of a traditionalist when it comes to my stories. but i’m sorry, when you do shit like having the moon and the sand talking to each other? well, that’s fucking annoying. especially when it just randomly appears in the middle of a story that hasn’t had any such nonsense like that up until that point. what the fuck? really dave, come on! cut the bullshit and just write. we all know you’re good. you’ve got scillions of adoring fans and a group of pals who are like the who’s who in hot young lit. so cut the monkey business. it’s not experimental, it’s not cutting edge, it’s just annoying and anyone who reads this book (and it’s well worth reading) should just skip the bullshit parts to get to the good stuff.