Dear Michael,
You don’t have to be the duke of irony if you don’t want to. But I’m sure neither of us wants to flee the kingdom entirely. We might get lonely. Besides, not all knowingness is created equal–especially not in this book. Though Eggers frequently uses it to plunge himself into a death spiral of self-awareness, he mostly wields irony to illuminate and heighten emotion. Take Eggers’ imagined alternative to his mother’s small, strange funeral:
We would be there, in the first pew, the beautiful and tragic Eggers children, soaked in blood, stoic, as a hundred or more would stand before us and speak of her, all the gifts she granted them, and her life would be recounted in glorious detail, every moment, all the holding together and sacrificing and–Then the ceiling would let go. The barrel vaulting would rise, and the entire roof would quietly unhinge itself and lift up, would rise straight up, and disappear and the church’s huge wooden cross-supports would fly up and away, and would quickly get too small, tiny in the rich blue sky and would become birds. The church would double in size, would triple, the space expanding, suddenly taking in all those waiting outside, and then become bigger, would take in everyone she had ever known, millions, all with their hearts in their two hands, offering them to her. … and then she would be gone, and we would all collapse right there, in the opened church, and sleep for weeks and weeks, dreaming of her. Oh it would be something, something fitting, proportionate, appropriate, gorgeous and lasting.
This is a knowing moment, but Eggers executes it lightly, deftly. Sure, he pokes fun at his own melodramatic fantasy, but the melodrama isn’t the subject–instead, it’s a means of conveying his terrible disappointment with the actual, depressing funeral and his desperation for a fitting tribute to his mother. Passages like this one make the hypertext song-and-dances I mentioned yesterday seem superfluous. Eggers doesn’t need them–his straight writing is nimble enough to convey contradictory emotions, distance between author and character, and author-reader playfulness.
I enjoy McSweeney’s, too. It’s the ultimate palate cleanser. Like Heartbreaking Work, the magazine sometimes spends an astounding amount of energy announcing its distance from the rest of its genre. One of its dominant themes seems to be its own exceptionality. I like the Web site even more–it doesn’t feel like an explicit refusal of anything, and as a result I think it’s the better party. (Readers who have never seen it–hit this link if you dare. You might be lost for hours. Today’s story begins, “Because I realize that it is more difficult to read a story than to write one, I’ve taken a step towards clearing things up for you. I have decided to repeat any sentences that may be important. I have decided to repeat any sentences that may be important …”)
I’m with you on the genius of Eggers’ marginalia. He’ll have to work very hard to keep it funny–already there’s less of it on the Web site than there used to be. Your riff on Spy and Might and Mad and Letterman made me wonder: what’s the normal life expectancy for a satiric magazine? In Heartbreaking Work, Eggers says that Might ran out of steam, became bitter, lost its sense of fun. Mad and Letterman are now considerably less witty imitations of their former selves. Was Spy as fresh at the end as it was at the start?
One of my Slate colleagues just asked me if I enjoyed Heartbreaking Work, if I’d recommend it to others. I thought I said it by quoting Sara Mosle’s Times review, but I’ll say it again: The book’s a knockout. The few criticisms I shared with you are, in the end, pretty much my own kind of marginalia.
Cheers,
Jodi
