I’m rereading A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius at the moment. It’s such an absolutely wonderful and powerful memoir. It’s not the first memoir I ever read but it is the most chaotic, I think. (Sean Wilsey’s Oh the Glory of It All may have it beat but not by much…I haven’t finished it yet.) I can’t quite tell if I love the book madly or if it freaks the hell out of me. Eggers is so intense in the book, sprawling through life with little to no supervision, all the while trying to live the best years of his life and be a full-time parent to his younger brother. I don’t know what I would do in the same situation.
The first 30-odd pages of the book (before the story even starts) are some of the most inventive and crazy I’ve ever been privilege to read. They’re almost a mini-story in advance of the novel, easing you into the wackiness in a more subtle way than the harshness of his true story can. I absolutely love this book. It makes sense of things that have no sound or sense. I am lost in the words that are laid down on the page.
