English teachers are great. But sometimes the “rules” have to be broken and writers who realize that right have a special place in my literary heart.
Take Dave Eggers. His ability to completely ignore a hold handful of common rules makes “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” a nice constant stream of consciousness flow from his brain straight to mine. Need to express the chaotic and quick-paced sense of a moment? Write a sentence with 200 words, 32 commas, three em-dashes and don’t even bother ending it with a period. That’s heroic.
The book itself is one that takes an ability to ignore the gross in the first few pages to unlock a story of siblings dealing with life after the quick deaths of their parents. The main string follows the narrator as he describes being in his young 20s and caring for his little brother.
If you have one of these “little brother” types in your life, it’s fascinating to watch as they try to adapt their brotherly relationship to one in which the older is now fully in charge of the younger “Toph.” That’s short for Christopher, and surely a name I shall never be utilizing for myself.
That relationship evolves into a “Big Daddy”-like situation where almost anything goes for Toph as long as he goes to school and does his homework. They describe the complete lack of cleaning in their household by saying that they like to eat at the kitchen table, but if that’s covered in crap they’ll go to the coffee table in the living room…and often end up just eating on the floor next to the dishes from some unknown previous meal. They argue about who should be responsible for cleaning the mess, and ultimately the older sibling puts on his guardian cap and makes Toph do it.
As much as the pair struggles to figure out their identity and relationship, the public has no clue what to make of it. That turns into the most entertaining portions of the story where Eggers sometimes describes feeling like people think he’s a pedophile stalking this young boy. He takes on the guardian role well, strategizing with his sister on how they can best protect and nurture their younger brother to have the most normal life possible given the circumstances.
After baseball practice, Eggers writes about asking Toph a very tough question:
“So why do you suck so much at hitting?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe you need a lighter bat.”
“You think?”
“Yeah, maybe we’ll get a new bat.”
“Can we?”
“Yeah, we’ll look for a new bat or something.”
Then I push him into a bush.
If that’s not brotherly love, I don’t know what is. I know I’ve written before about this process where I dog-ear pages as I read and look back at them know to figure out what exactly I wanted to touch on. Sometimes it takes me a while to figure out where I am in the story and thus the context of some point I wanted to make. Other times I get two words in and know exactly why I reached up and bent that corner.
In this passage, Eggers writes about being on a bus with Toph. He sees a young woman and starts to piece together details of her life just by looking. He wishes she could be in his life, helping to provide stability for Toph. But then comes up with a story of a boyfriend, including his occupation, nationality and a detail of being drafted into the Peruvian army. He decides that would make the arrangement OK, just young people living with each other for a happy household. But there’s an issue in his entirely made-up story:
“How would we decorate? That would be a problem. But I would defer. Yes, defer. To have a happy easy house with help from this woman and to have her and Toph content in their room with their stomachs on the carpet and sharing some book I would defer.”
A while back (a great expression for “some time in the past but really I haven’t the foggiest clue when this happened except it was kind of chilly since I remember wearing a jacket) I did a similar bit of backstory creation on public transit. I went into Washington, D.C. on the metro and wrote about a guy I saw on the train. I didn’t know him, but I was sure of so many things about him. Read it and two other similar accounts on chris.areyouert.com.
“Heartbreaking Work” is indeed heartbreaking at some points but the interactions and the way this family deals with its tragedy is ultimately heartwarming. There are parts that will make you really question their sanity, but when you step back and think about all the ways you can live your life and help raise another it’s hard to fault them at the end of the day. But more than anything, you’ll laugh at the interactions and inner workings of Eggers’ story, since you absolutely positively without question need these 437 pages in your reading history.