Dave Eggers, as you may have heard, was tapped to write a new introduction to the 10th anniversary edition of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. The piece glows with praise for the gigantic novel, as one might expect (since such intros are, in many cases, packaging to sell the novel.) However, as The Rake has discovered, this isn’t the only time that Eggers has written about Infinite Jest. He was, in a 1996 review, very disparaging of the book. Perhaps Eggers has changed his mind about Infinite Jest, or perhaps the offer to write the intro was simply too tempting to turn down. As ever, I’m willing to give people the benefit of the doubt, but this smacks of opportunism.
Dave Eggers Waffles
To Live and Die (and Read About It ) in LA
I have a Bloglines account. Since you're reading this blog, you probably know what I'm talking about, but in case you don't, I'll explain. Bloglines takes all the blogs and websites you read everyday and bundles them together in one place, so you can check them without getting repetitive stress disorder from your web browser. Bloglines is like the newspaper of stuff I care about. There is no real estate section in my paper, no classifieds, only sports, food, the occasional political rant, and then an extensive cultural section that includes the blog you're reading now, and more than a few others that cover film, music and celebrity gossip (the lifeblood of the modern news media).For the last couple of months, my "newspaper" has included a metro section, and that section has been dominated by the Homicide Report, written by Los Angeles Times crime reporter Jill Leovy. The Homicide Report is a straightforward, factual account of every homicide in Los Angeles County. It runs five days a week. Most of the homicides only a get a line or two, a simple description of the facts, under a stark and pointed headline ("Man shot working on a car"; "Teacher Found Killed"), but more importantly, whenever possible, the identity of the victim is revealed. For most homicides, this is a few lines more recognition than they would get in the Los Angeles Times or in any newspaper, for that matter. As Leovy says, "The media often covers homicide as a statistic story, marking up-and-down jags in the rates." In an interview with the blog LA Observed (another of my daily reads) she explains some of her motivation for starting the blog:"At the very least, seeing all the homicides arrayed in a list like this will give readers a much more real view of who is dying, and how often. And for me, it means no longer having to confront weeping mothers who say their sons' deaths were never covered by the press."It seems fitting that LA would lead the way with a blog about murder (Note: other cities have followed suit; just this week the Houston Chronicle launched its own homicide blog (via bloghouston.net)). After all, this is the city of James Ellroy and Raymond Chandler, of Michael Connelly and Joseph Wambaugh, of Quentin Tarantino and Michael Mann. Crime is woven into the fabric of the city and its culture in a way that doesn't seem to be the case in the other American cities (except maybe Baltimore). While the classic noirists and the masters of the procedural used crime in the city to tell stories of the evil that lurked within it, the Homicide Report seems determined to tell of the innocence, as well. It remains to be seen what effect the blog will have on crime rates, if any, but it already raises my awareness on a daily basis.
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Again, I Ask: Are Picture Books Leading Our Children Astray?
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On the Road
Books being read on the New York City subway a few days ago: The Cider House Rules by John Irving, White Teeth: A Novel by Zadie Smith, and Everything's Eventual : 14 Dark Tales by Stephen King.
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Kapuscinski on the radio
For some reason, the CBC never made their interview with Ryszard Kapuscinski available online after it originally aired. Luckily, Millions contributor Andrew Saikali listened to the show live and sent me a quick recap:- It was a half-hour interview which actually was recorded by the CBC at his home in Warsaw.- he's a very thoughtful, eloquent man- Much of it was devoted to growing up during the war, in Pinsk in the Poland/Belarus border area - I gather it sort of pingponged back and forth between the two jurisdictions throughout history- childhood poor - the war hit on what would have been his first day of school. - grew up with War being the norm. Peace, when it came, felt transitional, tentative- Pinsk was multi-ethnic then - Poles, Belarussians, Jews, Ukrainians maybe, and probably others that I forget. - Pre-war it was functional, the various ethnicities mixed and worked together in order to get by.- his parents were both teachers- hunger during the war caused him and others to ask the Russian soldiers for food, but all they could get were cigarettes.- often went barefoot (as children, during the war) - because shoes were in short supply - still sees people in their fancy shoes and flashes back to when he thought of them as "luxuries"- as a young reporter he was sent to both China and India (on two separate occasions) - and in each case the following happened: he was so overwhelmed by the culture, and got so immersed, that he felt as if he could spend the rest of his life reporting from there and writing about there - and so he asked to be transferred from there quickly - because as absorbed and fascinated as he was by it, he knew that first and foremost he was a man of the world and wanted so see and experience everything, everywhere - which, I think, shows remarkable self-awareness, especially in a young reporter, to know that one's worldly-tendencies were in danger of being trumped by a specific-regional fascination - to know enough about your own strengths and weaknesses to leave, and follow your "true path" before getting (permanently) drawn in to something specific (no matter how great it may be)
On the other hand…
There is no doubt some opportunism in an author taking advantage of an opportunity to look wise in hindsight, but Eggers also has a record of publishing Wallace stories–most notably the EXTREMELY recondite "Mr. Squishy," printed 5 years ago, pseudonymously, when there was no suggestion that any back-scratching would take place in return.
More generally, I think that Eggers' mediocre 1996 review is exactly what happens to great books in our hyperspeed culture. It is nearly impossible for a reviewer to tell how something is going to look in six months…not with respect to its strengths and weaknesses, but with respect to its staying power. I think I wrote a fairly glowing review of The Known World when it came out and I didn't know anything about EPJ, but I had little inkling that, in retrospect, it would appear monumental. Conversely, I really liked Aleksandar Hemon's "Nowhere Man" when I read it, but I don't think I'll be telling my grandkids about it.
This point is particularly relevant because certain blowhards who have had about three weeks to read the new Pynchon in advance readers' copies are now spouting off about it, both positively and negatively. How can one seriously evaluate something so big so quickly?
Though people do want to know about a book immediately, in order to decide whether to read it, it seems to me that the seriousness with which we take the insta-poll reactions to contemporary fiction should be in inverse proportion to the ambition of the work, or at least the page count.
What kind of opportunism would this be? Eggers is certainly the bigger name.
Good points here guys. People should have a right to change their minds, and an introduction to the book probably isn't the right place for Eggers to explain that initially he didn't like the book, but now he does (although it would be interesting to see him write about this somewhere.) For the record, I termed this as "opportunistic" because having his name attached to DFW in such a high profile way helps further burnish Eggers' cred in the world of contemporary fiction… But it's true, piling on Eggers here is probably unfair and just a little too easy… For more on why this isn't a big deal, check out Matthew Tiffany's thoughts on the subject.