The book has stirred big dust. A.H.W.O.S.G. topped out at number four on the Times bestseller non-fiction list, by my count, and reached number one on a national independent booksellers' list. But the success of Eggers' book is surprising. Sure, it's a good read. In its way, Eggers' success is even more surprising than was Bloom's.
All memoirs are acts of creative writing.
This one knows it, and the issues that gather around the telling of one's story form the actual core of the book. Eggers' style is funny, self-conscious, hip, and casually postmodern in its attention to media and culture. There is, as one might guess, more to this story. While several major reviews mentioned that Eggers comes off as a likeable fellow in his book, they don t make the connection that judgement implies. The devices Eggers employs are supposed to be the signs of a wretched personality, if one listens to the many critics of the contemporary sensibility he deploys.