David Eggers and McSweeneys.

[holyzombiejesus]

Anyone like his stuff? I'm reading The Every, his sequel to The Circle and it's a zippy read. I like him but I guess that the majority on here won't.

Those McSweeneys special editions seem like a life time ago now and most of them were as irritating as fuck and never got read, not in my house anyway. That one which came in a box that looked like a head was particularly annoying. The comics issue was a classic though.

[Inspector Norse]

I find that "the majority on here won't like it" is a safe bet with pretty much anything.

The only thing I've read by him was A Heartbreaking Work... which sat on my shelf for years after I'd been given it, because every time I looked at it I thought "nah don't want to read about kids with dead parents" or "nah hipster guff" but when I finally got round to it I really enjoyed it. It seemed, perhaps because it predated the 2000s "ironic" hipster explosion, to have really hit that sweet spot on the line between detached meta wit and genuine human emotion and openness.

But then I've never read anything else of his, or any of his magazines. He seemed to change tack after that debut and none of his subsequent works have really appealed. He seems to have established himself as a do-gooder-at-large with lots of educational things and whatnot, so fair play to him for that.

[13 schoolyards]

I read Heartbreaking Work at the time and remember thinking it was both well written and way too earnest for my tastes - he was at the forefront of a push in American writing at the time against irony and for just being sincere about everything, which McSweeney's also promoted for a while there.

He always struck me as a very canny writer as far as marketing and positioning himself goes, and his last couple of novels seem like a great way for him to continue to be earnest and concerned about things while also being about something (social media) that a lot of people (who will buy and read his books) actually are concerned about in a sincere and earnest way.

[Small Man Big Horse]

I've only read Zeitoun, and found it really well written and fascinating, but also bleak as fuck especially given events which took place after the end of the book. I really should check out some of his fiction though, and have no idea why I haven't.

[Replies From View]

I have 'a heartbreaking work of staggering genius' on one of my shelves but haven't found the day to read it

Slightly big-headed title if you ask me

[sevendaughters]

I've read A Heartbreaking etc, You Shall Know Our Velocity, and I gave up on What is the What (though I didn't necessarily dislike it, I guess I wanted more postmodern trickery and less straight-up earnestness).

These first two books really define a time in my life in the same way that Radiohead and Stanley Kubrick do for me. Gateway experiences to deeper and more expansive and more satisfyingly personal and political works in their field. Technically good, interesting, innovative, but something that prevents it from becoming a total favourite.

AHWOSG blew me away at 17 with its use of footnotes and extensive prologue and taking advantage of re-press to update some key events. It was an earnest look at a life spent playing with postmodernism (I think I got a copy of Might magazine off eBay as a result!) and how grief brings you away from that scared detachment of the world and into a real kind of engagement with it. I do wonder if it bears a re-read, as I did find some bits a little bit sticky the first time. I also didn't engage, as a young person, with these loving recollections of mom and dad as I was going through my own rebellious phase. Possibly reading that stuff now might be quite enlightening and painful.

YSKOV begins on the front cover: again, I am blown away by what is essentially a trick (not only that the first person narrator is dead, the novel takes place after their death and he is narrating it and aware of it) but also there is a lot of painful stuff in there. I liked little details, like planning a round the world trip to give away all of this money but forgetting to account for time difference and the international date line, and that his mate had made all this money by being a silhoutted image in an instruction manual. It is basically a road trip movie in a book where the real drama is between the lines rather than the what it is they do. I thought he conveyed it well.

Achewood said it best about McSweeneys that they seem to come at humour with tweezers; it is comedy for humourists, droll and literary and probably not really that funny at all.

Eggers has done a lot for young disadvantaged wouldbe writers through 826 Valencia and has not annoyed me with his personal opinions or public persona, so he gets a pass from me even though I can't see myself catching up with his bibliography.

[willbo]

didn't know about Every, but I remember reading the Circle and then reading Mr Penumbra by Robin Sloan, which was also a quirky novel set around Google, but much more positive. I remember thinking Penumbra must have been written in response to the Circle, even though I have no idea if it was.

[Mobbd]

I want to like him. I like Eggers adjacent stuff like Sedaris and Jonathan Ames and I have time for that gentle hipster tone. But The Circle was pretty meh and some of his other things (Hologram for the King and Where the Wild Things Are) do not inspire. Agree that those weirdly-shaped McS editions were annoying. Not bookcase compatible, I wonder what the idea for them was? Pride of place in the centre of the home? What, all of them?

[willbo]

Currently 100 pages into The Every and totally hooked!

I like it more than The Circle so far (which I found a bit silly and overlong) and heartbreaking work which I found almost unreadable a while back