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I brought this book with me one day into a local pizza place so that I could read while on my lunch break. The guy behind the counter noticed the cover and asked to see it, asking me if it was a good book and such. He said he really liked the cover and remarked something like "There's something really pleasing to the eye about that big red curtain off to the side. If artists want to make something really eye catching that's a good way to do it." I agreed with him as I wondered to myself if this guy had been scripted by Dave Eggers himself.

The cover of this book is a painting by a Russian painting duo named Komar and Melamid who are known for creating art based on market research surveys about aesthetic preference. They find out what most people want to see in a painting and then create this painting based on the data so that it would theoretically please the most possible people.

So the pizza guy hit on exactly what Komar and Melamid were doing and what Dave Eggers does himself with things like the tongue-in-cheek-pompous of the book's title. He's putting his life out there for you to read but he imbeds it with tricks to make you love it and love him. He explains in the brilliant preface and acknolwedgements sections how this memoir, like a lot of memoirs, is a work of fiction for various reasons. Some of those reasons involve changing character names to protect the real people, but other reasons involve making real life into an interesting narrative. Condensing, streamlining and altering actual events to make them more readable. Giving people what they want to read. He even gives a set of rules in the beginning on how to enjoy the book eventually suggesting to just skip everything after page 109 because it "gets a little uneven" thereafter.

The book is a memoir that simultaneously pokes fun at memoirs by self-referentially following and breaking the themes of a memoir. It's at it's most original when it does this, having characters speak out-of-character to point out themes or contradictions to Eggers. But at times he goes to far with it and detracts from the heartfelt story that he's trying to tell. The narrative tricks become too cute and disrupt the flow of what is a touching story of his relationship with his younger brother who he raises after both their parents die of cancer.

It rambles a bit when it strays from the brothers' relationship, trying to cover perhaps to much of his life. However being from Egger's generation and appreciating his sensibilities, I enjoyed reading about his experiments with magazine publishing and his life as a 20-something in the mid 90s.

B+

Posted at December 16, 2004 05:21 PM