A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

by Dave Eggers

  And I thought of poor Toph, this poor boy, three thousand miles away, staying with my sister—

  How could I leave him?

  p. 218: [M]y mother read a horror novel every night. She had read every one in the library. When birthdays and Christmas would come, I would consider buying her a new one, the latest Dean R. Koontz or Stephen King or whatever, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to encourage her. I couldn’t touch my father’s cigarettes, couldn’t look at the Pall Mall cartons in the pantry. I was the sort of child who couldn’t even watch commercials for horror movies—the ad for Magic, the movie where the marionette kills people, sent me into a six-month nightmare frenzy. So I couldn’t look at her books, would turn them over so their covers wouldn’t show, the raised lettering and splotches of blood—especially the V. C. Andrews oeuvre, those turgid pictures of those terrible kids, standing so still, all lit in blue.

  p. 414: Bill and Beth and Toph and I are watching the news. There is a small item about George Bush’s grandmother. It is apparently her birthday.

  We debate about how old the grandmother of a man in his late sixties must be. It seems impossible that she’s still breathing.

  Beth changes the channel.

  “That’s disgusting,” she says.

  p. 427: [S]he was living in a sort of perpetual present. Always she had to be told of her context, what brought her here, the origins and parameters of her current situation. Dozens of times each day she had to be told everything again—What made me? Whose fault am I? How did I get here? Who are these people?—the accident recounted, sketched in broad strokes, her continuously reminded but always forgetting—

  Not forgetting. Having, actually, no capacity to grip the information—

  But who does? Fuck it, she was alive and she knew it. Her voice sang the same way it always did, her eyes bulged with amazement over the smallest things, anything, my haircut. Yes, she still knew and had access to those things that had been with her for years—that part of her memory was there, intact—and while I wanted to punish those responsible, would relish it and presumed that I would never tire of it, being with her, so close to her skin and the blood rushing beneath it, drains me of hatred.

  The music from the pool changed.

  “Ooh, I like this song,” she said, doing a zig-zag with her neck.

  Finally, this edition reflects the author’s request that all previous epigraphs—including “The heart’s immortal thirst to be completely known and all forgiven.” (H. Van Dyke); “[My poems] may hurt the dead, but the dead belong to me.” (A. Sexton); “Not every boy thrown to the wolves becomes a hero.” (J. Barth); “Everything will be forgotten and nothing will be redressed.” (M. Kundera); “Why not just write what happened?” (R. Lowell); “Ooh, look at me, I’m Dave, I’m writing a book! With all my thoughts in it! La la la!” (Christopher Eggers)—be removed, as he never really saw himself as the type of person who would use epigraphs.

  ·August 1999

  CONTENTS

  Rules and Suggestions for Enjoyment of This Book.............vii

  Preface to This Edition..................................ix

  Acknowledgments....................................xxi

  Incomplete Guide to Symbols and Metaphors..............xxxviii

  PART I.

  Through the small tall bathroom window, etc.............................1

  Scatology—video games—blood—“blind leaders of the blind” [Bible]—some violence—embarrassment, naked men—mapping

  PART II.

  Please look. Can you see us, etc......................................................47

  California—ocean plunging, frothing—Little League, black mothers— rotation and substitution—hills, views, roofs, toothpicks—numbing and sensation—Johnny Bench—motion

  PART III.

  The enemies list, etc..........................................................................71

  Demotion—teachers driven before us—menu—plane crash—light— knife—State of the Family Room Address—half-cantaloupes—so like a fragile girl—old model, new model—Bob Fosse Presents

  PART IV.

  Oh I could be going out, sure ........................................................105

  But no. No no!—the weight—seven years one’s senior, how fitting— John Doe—decay v. preservation—burgundy, bolts

  PART V.

  Outside it’s blue-black and getting darker, etc........................123

  Stephen, murderer, surely—The Bridge—Jon and Pontius Pilate— John, Moodie, et al.—lies—a stolen wallet—the 99th percentile— Mexican kids—lineups, lights—a trail of blood, and then silence

  PART VI.

  When we hear the news at first ...................................................167

  [Some mild nudity]—all the hope of history to date—an interview— death and suicide—mistakes—keg beer—Mr. T—Steve the Black Guy—a death faked, perhaps (the gray car)—a possible escape, via rope, of sheets—a broken door—betrayal justified

  PART VII.

  Fuck it. Stupid show, etc.................................................................239

  Some bitterness, some calculation—Or anything that looks un-us—more nudity, still mild—of color, who is of color?—Chakka the Pakuni— hairy all the crotches are, bursting from panties and briefs—The Marina—The flying-object maneuver—drama or blood or his mouth foaming or—a hundred cymbals—would you serve them grapes? Would that be wrong?—“So I’m not allowed”—Details of all this will be good

  PART VIII.

  We can’t do anything about the excrement...............................281

  The Future—“Slacker? Not me,” laughs Hillman—Meath: Oh yeah, we love that multicultural stuff—Fill out forms—“a nightmare WASP Utopia”—a sexual sort of lushness—There has been Spin the Bottle— “I don’t know”—“Thank you, Jesus”—“I’m dying, Shal”

  PART IX.

  Robert Urich says no. We were so close .....................................311

  Laura Branigan, Lori Singer, Ed Begley, Jr.—to be thought of as smart, legitimate, permanent. So you do your little thing—a bitchy little thing about her—a fall—the halls, shabbily shiny, are filled with people in small clumps—that Polly Klaas guy giving me the finger at the trial— Adam, by association, unimpressive

  PART X.

  Of course it’s cold.............................................................................353

  The cold when walking off the plane—plans for a kind of personal archaeological orgy or something, from funeral homes to John Hussa, whose mom heated milk once, after Grizzly—weddings—a lesbian agnostic named Minister Lovejoy—Chad and the copies—leaf pile— another threat—of course she knows—wouldn’t everyone be able to tell?—the water rising, as if under it already

  PART XI.

  Black Sands Beach is ........................................................................407

  No hands—down the hill, the walk—not NAMBLA—birthday, parquet—Skye—hot, poisoned blood—jail, bail, the oracle—more maneuvers—a fight—finally, finally.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The author wishes first and foremost to acknowledge his friends at NASA and the United States Marine Corps, for their great support and unquantifiable help with the technical aspects of this story. /Les saludo, muchachos! He wishes also to acknowledge the many people who have stretched the meaning of generosity by allowing their real names and actions to appear in this book. This goes doubly for the author’s siblings, especially his sister Beth, whose memories were in most places more vivid, and triply for Toph (pronounced “Tofe”—long o), for obvious reasons. His older brother Bill is not being singled out because he is a Republican. The author would like to acknowledge that he does not look good in red. Or pink, or orange, or even yellow—he is not a spring. And until last year he thought Evelyn Waugh was a woman, and that George Eliot was a man. Further, the au
thor, and those behind the making of this book, wish to acknowledge that yes, there are perhaps too many memoir-sorts of books being written at this juncture, and that such books, about real things and real people, as opposed to kind-of made up things and people, are inherently vile and corrupt and wrong and evil and bad, but would like to remind everyone that we could all do worse, as readers and as writers. Anecdote: midway through the writing of this...this...memoir, an acquaintance of the author’s accosted him at a Western-themed restaurant/bar, while the author was eating a hearty plate of ribs and potatoes served fried in the French style. The accoster sat down opposite, asking what was new, what was up, what was he working on, etc. The author said Oh, well, that he was kind of working on a book, kind of mumble mumble. Oh great, said the acquaintance, who was wearing a sport coat made from what seemed to be (but it might have been the light) purple velour. What kind of book? asked the acquaintance. (Let’s call him, oh, “Oswald.”) What’s it about? asked Oswald. Well, uh, said the author, again with the silver tongue, it’s kind of hard to explain, I guess it’s kind of a mem-oir-y kind of thing— Oh no! said Oswald, interrupting him, loudly. (Oswald’s hair, you might want to know, was feathered.) Don’t tell me you’ve fallen into that trap! (It tumbled down his shoulders, Dungeons & Dragons—style.) Memoir! C’mon, don’t pull that old trick, man! He went on like this for a while, using the colloquial language of the day, until, well, the author felt sort of bad. After all, maybe Oswald, with the purple velour and the brown corduroys, was right—maybe memoirs were Bad. Maybe writing about actual events, in the first person, if not from Ireland and before you turned seventy, was Bad. He had a point! Hoping to change the subject, the author asked Oswald, who shares a surname with the man who killed a president, what it was that he was working on. (Oswald was some sort of professional writer.) The author, of course, was both expecting and dreading that Oswald’s project would be of grave importance and grand scope—a renunciation of Keynesian economics, a reworking of Grendel (this time from the point of view of nearby conifers), whatever. But do you know what he said, he of the feathered hair and purple velour? What he said was: a screenplay. He didn’t italicize it then but we will here: a screenplay. What sort of screenplay? the author asked, having no overarching problem with screenplays, liking movies enormously and all, how they held a mirror to our violent society and all, but suddenly feeling slightly better all the same. The answer: A screenplay “about William S. Burroughs, and the drug culture.” Well, suddenly the clouds broke, the sun shone, and once again, the author knew this: that even if the idea of relating a true story is a bad idea, and even if the idea of writing about deaths in the family and delusions as a result is unappealing to everyone but the author’s high school classmates and a few creative writing students in New Mexico, there are still ideas that are much, much worse. Besides, if you are bothered by the idea of this being real, you are invited to do what the author should have done, and what authors and readers have been doing since the beginning of time:

  PRETEND IT’S FICTION.

  As a matter of fact, the author would like to make an offer. For those of you on the side of Oswald, he will do this: if you send in your copy of this book, in hardcover or paperback, he will send you, for a fee of $10.00 (make check out to D. Eggers), a 3.5” floppy disk, on which will be a complete digital manuscript of this work, albeit with all names and locations changed, in such a way that the only people who will know who is who are those whose lives have been included, though thinly disguised. Voila! Fiction! Further, the digital version will be interactive, as we expect our digital things to be (hey, have you heard of these new molecule-sized microchips? The ones that can do, like all the functions ever performed by all computers since the beginning of time, in one second, in a grain of salt? Can you believe that? Well, it’s as true now as ever: technology is changing the way we live). About the digital version, for starters, you’ll have the option of choosing the protagonist’s name. We’ll provide dozens of suggestions, including “the Writer,” “the Author,” “the journalist,” and “Paul Theroux”—or you can go it alone and make up your own! Matter of fact, using the search-and-replace function your computer surely features, readers should be able to change all the names within, from the main characters down to the smallest

  cameos. (This can be about you You and your pals!) Those interested in this fictional version of this book should send their books to A.H.W.O.S.G. Special Offer for Fiction-Preferrers, c/o Vintage Books, 299 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10171. NOTE: This offer is real. ALTHOUGH: Books sent in, unfortunately, cannot be returned. INSTEAD: They will be remaindered with the rest. Moving on: The author wishes to acknowledge the existence of a planet just beyond Pluto, and further, wishes, on the basis of his own casual research and faith, to reassert Pluto’s plan-ethood. Why did we do that to Pluto? We had it good with Pluto. The author wishes to acknowledge that because this book is occasionally haha, you are permitted to dismiss it. The author wishes to acknowledge your problems with the title. He too has reservations. The title you see on the cover was the winner of a round-robin sort of title tourney, held outside Phoenix, Arizona, over a long weekend in December 1998. The other contenders, with reasons for failure: A Heartbreaking Work of Death and Embarrassment (true but unappealing); An Astounding Work of Courage and Strength (Stephen Ambrose would have cause for action); Memories of a Catholic Boyhood (also taken, more or less); and Old and Black in America (risque, some say). We preferred the last one, alluding as it does to both aging and an American sort of otherness, but it was dismissed out of hand by the publisher, leaving us with A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Yes, it caught your eye. First you took it at face value, and picked it up immediately. “This is just the sort of book for which I have been looking!” Many of you, particularly those among you who seek out the maudlin and melodramatic, were struck by the “Heartbreaking” part. Others thought the “Staggering Genius” element seemed like a pretty good recommendation. But then you thought, Hey, can these two elements work together? Or might they be like peanut butter and chocolate, plaid and paisley—never to peacefully coexist? Like, if this book is, indeed, heartbreaking, then why spoil the mood with the puffery? Or, if the title is some elaborate joke, then why make an attempt at sentiment? Which is to say nothing of the faux (real? No, you beg, please no) boastfulness of the whole title put together. In the end, one’s only logical interpretation of the title’s intent is as a) a cheap kind of joke b) buttressed by an interest in lamely executed titular innovation (employed, one suspects, only to shock) which is

  c) undermined of course by the cheap joke aspect, and

  d) confused by the creeping feeling one gets that the author is dead serious in his feeling that the title is an accurate description of the content, intent, and quality of the book. Oh, pshaw—does it even matter now? Hells no. You’re here, you’re in, we’re havin’ a party!

  The author would like to acknowledge that he did, indeed, vote for Ross Perot in 1996, and is not the least ashamed about it, because he is an ardent fan of the rich and insane, particularly when their hearts bleed, which Mr. Perot’s does, it really does. On a different note, the author feels obligated to acknowledge that yes, the success of a memoir—of any book, really—has a lot to do with how appealing its narrator is. To address this, the author offers the following:

  a) That he is like you.

  b) That, like you, he falls asleep shortly after he becomes drunk.

  c) That he sometimes has sex without condoms.

  d) That he sometimes falls asleep when he is drunk having sex without condoms.

  e) That he never gave his parents a proper burial.

  f) That he never finished college.

  g) That he expects to die young.

  h) That, because his father smoked and drank and died as a result, he is afraid of food. i) That he smiles when he sees young black men holding babies. One word: appealing. And that’s just the beginning! Now, the author also wishes to acknowledge t
he major themes of this book. They are:

  a) The Unspoken Magic of Parental Disappearance It is every child’s and teens dream. Sometimes it is born of bitterness. Sometimes it is born of self-pity. Sometimes one wants attention. Usually all three factors play a part. The point is that everyone at one point or another daydreams about their parents dying, and about what it would be like to be an orphan, like Annie or Pippi Longstocking or, more recently, the beautiful, tragic naifs of Party of Five. One pictures, in place of the love perhaps unpredictably given and more often withheld by one’s parents, that, in their absence, that love and attention would be lavished upon them, that the townspeople, one’s relatives, one’s friends and teachers, the world around, would suddenly be swept up in sympathy and fascination for the orphaned child, that his or her life would be one of celebrity mixed with pathos, fame sprung from tragedy—the best kind, by far. Most daydream it, some live it, and this aspect of the book will intimate that just as it was in Pippi, it is in real life. Thus, an incomparable loss begets both constant struggle and heart-hardening, but also some unimpeachable rewards, starting with absolute freedom, interpretable and of use in a number of ways. And though it seems inconceivable to lose both parents in the space of 32 days—there was that line from The Imp. of Being Earnest: “To have lost one parent, Mr. Worthing, might be considered a misfortune. To have lost both smacks of carelessness”—and to lose them to completely different diseases (cancer, sure, but different enough, in terms of location, duration, and provenance), that loss is accompanied by an undeniable but then of course guilt-inducing sense of mobility, of infinite possibility, having suddenly found oneself in a world with neither floor nor ceiling.