About three-quarters into How We Are Hungry, an anthology of short stories (with a perfect title) by Dave Eggers, I finally figured out why I like Dave Eggers. It took me two months to begin to appreciate You Shall Know Our Velocity. At first, I didn’t like the book, it felt empty and at times, I contemplated dropping it but gradually, I began to love it. I miss it now. I want to read it again.
At the core of most of Eggers’ stories is the search for transcendence, the chasing after a hope that there’s something more to life than there is. As The Post’s review put it (emphasis mine), “true to his book’s title, Eggers has made his task here an exploration of the different ways our behavior is determined by hunger — for intimacy and connection, to be sure, but more generally for any kind of transcendence, however momentary.” As someone who searches for this very same thing, I can relate on a very deep level. But often, his stories seem depressing because they are always about the futility of our efforts in transcending. In all his stories, the characters find it but it’s ephemeral and in a moment, it’s gone. And when it’s over, there’s nothing but meaninglessness. They don’t crash or become clinically depressed, they just return to everyday life with its alarm clocks, bad dinners and awkward social situations. And that’s the way life really is.
My other favorite writers, Nicole Krauss and Jonathan Safran Foer, are different. They write about the same things but they offer a hopeful, almost impossible and probably impossible, alternative. These are visions of long lasting transcendence, something to aspire to and to hope for in all life. Their real lives prove that point, their marriage is the conceptual embodiment of this perfection, all they write about.
Eggers and Krauss+Foer are equally fascinating. Their books make me happy even though the conclusions they reach are so different. I’d rather my life be perfect, like a character in Everything is Illuminated. But the struggle for that perfection (and possible impossibility of it) is something Eggers writes about really well. At least, the people in his books are searching for enlightenment and transcendence even if they only find it for a split second. At least, they are like me!
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