CONT'D: The First Review of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius | Page 1, 2

He knew that you, the reader, might experience an initial shock wave from these facts. Moreover, he lets you know that he knows what the effect is, and the effect of distrust or fear of manipulation that may be created by the effect. This hyper-self-aware, preemptive guessing relieves you of anything with which to pre-judge his efforts, and even makes you want to cry out "Dude, just say what you gotta say!" (maybe not the "dude" part). And that's just the preface. By the end of the preface (and the acknowledgements, during which he acknowledges among many other things "Palestinian statehood"), you are not a defensive reader. It is as if your brain and heart have been swept clean and made ready for the book.

Eggers then gives you the goods, the Staggering Genius portion of the show. It is hard to try and convey the effect of his brilliantly well-crafted storytelling maneuvers without wanting to copy vast passages of text for you, for which I would need permission from Simon & Schuster. So I'll copy from the blurbs on the back. In the words of David Sedaris, author of the incredibly funny and critically acclaimed autobiography Naked, "The force and energy of this book could power a train." Tragic Joycean passages of stream-of-conscious thought can be found alongside manic, rapid-fire dialogue or darkly humorous discussions of everything from yuppie materialism, to MTV's "Real World," to his mother's ashes.

Nestled amongst the sublime, nutritional, emotionally and physically satisfying chunks of story, there are surrealist narrative tchotchkes, bells and whistles (someone smart told me the word for it is "postmodern")-like including a line drawing of the layout of his apartment in order to illustrate the best path for sliding on the floor in your socks, or a musical score to show how a phrase is spoken aloud, and as Eggers sets forth in the preface, "people break out of their narrative space-time continuum to cloyingly talk about the book itself." We do have fun reading this.

But "fun" is too simple a word for his means to the end. You laugh, you cry, it's better than Cats, but still it adds up to more. The whole of A.H.W.O.S.G. is greater than its parts. There is an unbelievable life force thrumming through every line. It's not the distancing life force of a driven genius; it's one that compels you to stand and stare, without feeling weird. You can see it well in a certain existential slice, about halfway through, when he's being interviewed by an MTV "Real World" scout: "I was born into a town and a family and the town and my family happened to me. I own none of it. It is everyone's. It is shareware. I like it, I like having been a part of it, I would kill or die to protect those who are part of it, but I do not claim exclusivity. Have it. Take it from me. Do with it what you will. Make it useful. This is like making electricity out of dirt; it is almost too good to be believed, that we can make beauty from this stuff."

To come full circle: man, am I glad to be the first to read this, and you will be too.

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Andrea Nicolay works, lives, and writes in New York City. She is the PopPulse book editor.
E-mail: anicolay@poppulse.com