DAVE EGGERS

“Up there we see everything, Oakland to the left, El Cerrito and Richmond to the right, Marin forward, over the Bay, Berkeley below, all red rooftops and trees of cauliflower and columbine, shaped like rockets and explosions, all those people below us, with humbler views; we see the Bay Bridge, clunkety, the Richmond Bridge, straight, low, the Golden Gate, red toothpicks and string, the blue between, the blue above, the gleaming white Land of the Lost/Superman's North Pole Getaway magic crystals that are San Francisco.” 
​- Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

ABOUT DAVE EGGERS

Dave Eggers is a talented American writer who has had an important impact on the modern literary world.  His first book, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000), is an idiosyncratic but truthfully heartbreaking memoir of his experience as a 21 year old trying to take care of his younger brother after the sudden death of their parents.  Eggers wrote for Salon.com and has contributed to many magazines; he started an online journal called McSweeney’s, co-founded a literary non-profit called 826 Valencia and a human rights non-profit called Voice for Witness, and recently founded a program called ScholarMatch that matches donors with students needing tuition assistance.  And last but not least, Eggers has published a few best-selling fictional novels and several other non-fiction books, including some children’s books.  His interest are varied but his writing style is always quirky, perceptive, and enormously entertaining.  Only a few of his books can loosely be considered as travel writing, but he likes the genre, having contributed to a few travel collections, including An Innocent Abroad and The Kindness of Strangers.

A5 RECOMMENDATIONS - DAVE EGGERS BOOKS

OTHER BOOKS BY DAVE EGGERS

Dave Eggers is a prolific writer with many popular books.  A Hologram for the King (2012), a novel about a struggling businessman's attempt to resurrect his career with a project in Saudi Arabia, has been made into a 2016 movie starring Tom Hanks.  Other popular novels include The Circle (2013), How We Are Hungry (2005), and The Wild Things (2009), a novel very loosely tied to the kids book by Maurice Sendak.

GREAT QUOTES BY DAVE EGGERS

“But criticism, for the most part, comes from the opposite place that book-enjoying should come from. To enjoy art one needs time, patience, and a generous heart, and criticism is done, by and large, by impatient people who have axes to grind. The worst sort of critics are (analogy coming) butterfly collectors - they chase something, ostensibly out of their search for beauty, then, once they get close, they catch that beautiful something, they kill it, they stick a pin through its abdomen, dissect it and label it. The whole process, I find, is not a happy or healthy one. Someone with his or her own shit figured out, without any emotional problems or bitterness or envy, instead of killing that which he loves, will simply let the goddamn butterfly fly, and instead of capturing and killing it and sticking it in a box, will simply point to it - "Hey everyone, look at that beautiful thing" - hoping everyone else will see the beautiful thing he has seen. "
​- Dave Eggers

INTERESTING LINKS:

  • McSweeney’s is an independent non-profit publisher in San Francisco that was founded by Dave Eggers.  The organization is committed to discovering outstanding new writing from all over the world and presenting it in ways that celebrate its worth and extend its reach..
  • In 2002, Eggers co-founded an amazing non-profit organization called 826 National.  826 National provides strategic leadership, administration, and other resources to ensure the success of its network of seven writing and tutoring centers.  Their mission is based on the understanding that great leaps in learning can happen with individualized attention, and that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success.  Click here for more details, and perhaps to contribute to this great cause.

DAVE EGGERS - TED TALK