Death, life and love

CERTAIN kinds of writing are possible only in America, where the West finds its most extreme expression: directness grows into obviousness, activism into intolerance of misfortune, individualism into celebration of the individual. We must remember and respect this when we read a book like A Staggering Work of Heartbreaking Genius, just issued in paperback.

Dave Eggers, 21, Beth and Bill, slightly older, and Toph, seven, have lived a comfortable life with their parents in middle America. Suddenly, both parents are struck by cancer. While the children are trying to prepare for the death of their mother, who is more obviously ill, and who matters most, their father dies. Thirty-two days later their mother also dies. This double whammy knocks the nucleus out of the family and what remains disintegrates and is scattered. Dave will look after young Toph, with a little help from Beth.

Dave and Toph must have a home. It is all up to Dave. Toph must not screw up, do that project right, love Dave, and the world, stay away from drugs, not shoot his classmates, not be molested. And Dave? Dave must, earn a living, kiss Toph good-night, play frisbee with Toph. But that is not all (he is just 20-something) he must have a life. He must save the world. He must pose naked (the body is beautiful and the world must know this). He must conquer women. He must be mother, father, brother, friend, lover, citizen triumphant, and motherless son.

With the even flow of his everyday life turning suddenly into white water, Eggers has to do everything in his power to stay afloat. Seven years later, when he tells us the (true) story of his terrifying ride, we are there with him on his flimsy raft, holding onto little Toph, bouncing off the rocks, plummeting over the falls. In the catharsis of storytelling, Eggers has created an American marvel.

Eggers's prose is perfectly in tune with the cadences of young America - with its restless energy in feeling, thought, and speech. And his longue ligne, as important in a narrative as in a concerto, soars like a well-thrown frisbee. "The distance relies on both velocity and angle of flight, you have to throw the living shit out of the thing, and also put it on the correct trajectory, an upward trajectory both straight and steady, not too high, not too low, because if it is sent on the right upward path, its momentum will carry it almost twice the distance, the second half a gimme". Perhaps he throws it just a little too high, it does falter just a little in the second half, does fall just a little short. After the high of the deaths and their aftermath, the story wobbles a little. Besides Eggers unlike Salinger, the master he most reminds us of also has not learned to create a character outside of its relationship with himself. When we meet Holden Caulfield's sister Phoebe in Catcher in the Rye we say "Hi, Phoebe. How is it going?" We want to say "Hi!" to Toph too, but Dave is always hiding the little guy behind himself.

He portrays a relationship with a sweet and heartrending intensity. Dave and Toph "look like [we've] been playing together for years. Busty women stop and stare. Senior citizens stop and shake their heads, gasping. Religious people fall to their knees. No one has ever seen anything like it". Revisiting the church where the memorial service for his mother was held, he remembers the too-small crowd that assembled to mourn her. Anyone who has seen the world spin on after losing a loved one will recognise his cry: "Where are the people from town? Where are the parents of her former students? Where are my friends? Where are the world's people to honour her passing? She fought for so long for all you people. Where are you *****?"

Eggers's writing is not restrained or understated. (This is America, not Japan or even England.) He is not embarrassed by the obviousness of his people; instead he plays it out to us. He works on us not through resonant silences but by hitting every note he has heard. He hits them right, one true note after another, to create a song of himself that we remember long after we have heard it. He celebrates himself. This is my life. I have suffered, I am owed, awright? So, listen up, and applaud. We do.

BIKRAM PHOOKUN A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers, Picador, 2000.

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