Dave Eggers

Dave Eggers at the Novella Festival
I first became aware of the Novella Festival of Reading in 2003 when I saw that Neil Gaiman was coming to town. Got the tickets, and I was on my way to see him read for the 2nd time. I guess I was kind of an insensitive douche at dinner tho when I said something mean about little kids. Or something like that. Regardless. I ended up going by myself just in time to see Neil walking back across the street from the Smelly Cat coffee shop signalling the end of the reading and the beginning of the signing. I could have gone in, I suppose, but I didn't. I dunno... I just didn't. But this time... I saw that Dave Eggers would be speaking, and I didn't want to miss it. I'd only read his first novel, but I really really liked it. (Thanks, Scott... and Cindy?) Before going I picked up his most recent as well as How We Are Hungry. I planned to read at least one before the signing, but I am lazy. Or just easily distracted. So, of course, nothing was read by me.
I imagine it's true with everyone about most everything... I always seem to believe that I am the average demographic for people who like the things that I like. So I was pretty surprised and amused tonight when a vast majority of the people filing in were substantially older than me. Grandparents old. I have a difficult time believing that more old people than young people identify with and enjoy A Heartbreaking Work... Having gotten partially through What is the What, I can see why Eggers would also appeal to an older crowd. Or, as Allison suggested, perhaps these were just people who were attending most or all of the Novello events. Of course, that's neither here nor there. So Dave came out a little bit late looking... more or less... like I thought he would (should?). It was great fun to watch him stand there. In lots of ways it was like I was looking at myself. He's so freaking fidgety and nervous looking; I feel like I used to do that when I used to have to stand on stage and say things to people in school or whatever. Luckily for everyone that doesn't happen anymore. Once, in middle school, I got in trouble for refusing to lead the assembly in the Pledge of Allegiance. Eventually they made me do it tho. I started with the Calvin and Hobbes version of "I pledge allegiance to Queen Frag and her mighty state of hysteria." Then I just stood there. Fucking assholes. I do not know why I remember that... nor why I decided to share it now. sdlkgjasdlkg. So, Dave. This thing occurred the weekend for Halloween partying in downtown Charlotte. While Dave was talking there was this incessant thumping in the background. Turns out that there was a huge Halloween party right across the street from the auditorium. Lots of near naked people running around getting drunk. And here we are listening to an author talk about Sudan. I'm only minorly bitter about my lack of desire to lose my inhibitions and do crazy "fun" stuff with lots of other random people. None of this seemed to bother anyone else tho, so that's good. Although, between the techno-fly bass drums and Dave twisting the cap to his Coke on and off and on and off in the microphone, it was kind of like being at a rave. Except without the glo-sticks and dancing. And drugs. And lights. Actually it wasn't like being at a rave at all. It was like being in school again. Which, oddly, was really awesome. This most recent book (What is the What) was so very obviously his current pride-and-joy. It was really cool to see how happy and excited he was about this thing. Especially when compared to how self-deprecating he was regarding Heartbreaking Work... The "lecture" portion of the talk ended up being Dave mostly telling the story of how it came to be that he was the author of this book. Much like HWoSG is fictionally auto-biographical, WitW is fictionally biographical. I don't know if Dave would agree with me or not, but (I am now halfway through the book since I first began writing this post) the two books seem very stylistically similar to me. Both are written from a first-person perspective and both attempt to stay historically accurate in a general sense while being aware that the details are often lost to time and, therefore, imagined by the author. The most interesting story, I thought, was how he actually arrived at the decision to write the book this way. There was a phone call that initially put Achak (who is the main character in WitW) in touch with Dave, which led to meetings, which led to him accepting the job. Having been trained as a journalist, he initially approached the task as a journalist. As an outside observer attempting to tell history. After two years of frustration, he said that his excitement for the project had waned b/c he just couldn't make the story work with this stylistic choice. He felt that he was inserting himself into the story too much and that he was depersonalizing the tale. His initial self-imposed deadline for completing the book was one year, and he believed that it would have been better to just cut his losses and pass the project to someone else. But, before making that final decision, he said he realized the he could write the story from Achak's eyes except that he knew he'd have to make up the details for the novel to be readable. In relating this anecdote to us, he made it pretty clear that he was embarrassed to even be bringing up his new idea. But he called Achak and told him how he wanted to write the story and asked if it was ok if he took artistic license with the details of his life. Achak just laughed at him and said that's what he thought Dave had been doing the whole time.. Suffice to say, the book got written and doing so really made an impression on the author. He travelled to southern Sudan several times during the course of writing the novel and seemed to have become very close with several of "The Lost Boys" of Sudan. A few of the guys who had been relocated to the States were in attendance as well and one guy (David something... I only remember b/c Dave answered questions posed to "David" until he realized that they both had the same name... that was funny) helped field the audience questions. And Dave was excited to have the audience questions. Except for the one or two about HWoSG... he just became so embarrassed anytime that came up. The word "staggering" was used to describe something else, and he just kind of crumpled on stage, "Ugh... there's THAT word again." But the questions about Sudan and the history and Marial Bai. He obviously loved. He seemed at ease when he felt like he was teaching people about stuff that had very little to do with himself. He was proud to be able to bring this story to people who never would have experienced it in such a personal way before. It seemed really easy for him to get into the history and the causes of things in Sudan (and Achak's life), and it was pretty inspiring. Even though he never read a passage from the book and spoke very very little about the only book of his that I'd actually read, I still very much enjoyed it. I wish, now, that I had read the book prior to this lecture/Q&A thing since, naturally, now is when I have questions I want to ask. And because he totally revealed a pretty major plot development... I'll spare you on that one. But getting to hear the how-it-came-to-be story, seeing the photos of the actual places and people involved, and hearing and seeing the emotion put into this book by the author has really made reading it a much more enjoyable experience. I mean, I guess it's more enjoyable. Impossible to empirically prove, but I'm sticking with my hypothesis. And now I'd really like to find a cause outside of myself into which I could lose myself. But the closest I came was searching google for jobs in Sudan for about a week. Turns out that you can't really get paid to do that stuff. I'm such a stupid American consumer. Also, when I was writing notes to remind me of what I wanted to say about this thing I wrote this down: It's easier to not feel something that you do feel than it is to feign a feeling you don't really have I wish I could remember why I wrote that, but it completely escapes me now. I guess it's also a pretty obvious truism tho, so perhaps it's best that I can't remember what I was gonna say.
I also thought these things were funny. This event happend at Imaginon which is this totally badass place for kids to hang out off of the public library downtown. I'd have loved this when I was little and pure and not so damned jaded. And I probably would not have found it odd that these sculptures pictured at right are the first things that would have greeted me when I walked in the door. But now it amuses me. I suppose that's all I'll say about that.
I would be remiss were I to write all this crap and not drop a link to the Valentino Achak Deng Foundation, which attempts to help relocated Sudanese as well as rebuild war-affected towns and villages in Sudan. (and from whom I stole this picture of a sunset in Marial Bai) Check it out.
And here are the signature pages from the three books Allison and I had signed
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius	How We Are Hungry	What Is the What