What is the What

I haven’t read the book yet, though I’m planning to, so I was interested to read the review here. I usually find PopMatters’ reviewers to be pretty insightful, but I was really disappointed by this article. The reviewer barely touches on the actual writing, beyond mentioning that the frame narrative doesn’t work for them, focusing instead on their apathy in the face of the recent media attention to the Lost Boys of Sudan, which I find specious, and actually kind of insulting, particularly the crack about “God Grew Tired of Us (I know the feeling).” Does the reviewer really believe the average reader of this book is suffering from the same information overload about the Sudanese refugees? And, beyond this benumbment, is there a real reason why the book works or does not work? Does Eggers succumb to his stylistic faults? Does the voice of Deng come through? Is the writing lucid and clear, or cluttered and dull? I have no idea from this review, because the review focuses so little on the book itself.

Also, it should be “the stakes are already high,” not “the stocks are already high.”

Comment by Jake from San Francisco — December 11, 2006 @ 10:24 pm

I am a little doubtful that this reviewer actually even read this book. To say that Deng’s story seems “repetitive and predictable” and that all the stories from various Lost Boys could be “condensed into a single narrative” is not only condescending and speaks of numbing privilege, but it also misses much of the point of this novel, which is exactly that they cannot be condensed into a single narrative, that this is not a homogenous group, but that these are individual lives, each from a different village, each witness to their own particular set of atrocities. The previous commenter pointed out how little this review talked about the writing and on second glance at the review, I also notice that there is no mention of the actual writing. There is not one quote from the novel and very little discussion of anything contained within it, practically nothing aside from basic bullet points about the plot, which perhaps the reviewer gleaned from the Kakutani review cited. This review is disgustingly smarmy, which might be okay were it at all intelligent or at all relevenet to the book presumably being reviewed. What’s so special about Mikita Brottman?

Comment by charlie — December 17, 2006 @ 9:39 pm

Am I the only person who thinks it’s weird that Eggers appropriated the voice of a black African in order to tell his autobiography? What pisses me
off about reviews like Prose’s (in the Times Sunday Book Review) is the underlying assumption that fictional narrative is intrinsically more difficult than nonfiction, so that by choosing fiction he chose the more ambitious path. When probably what happened was exactly the opposite--he tried doing it as nonfiction and failed. There’s nothing fictional about interviewing somebody at length and then writing their story in the first person. Actually, there’s nothing fictional about most of Eggers’ work.

Comment by hugo — December 23, 2006 @ 2:14 pm

This is a subject that demanded nonfiction treatment. Eggers blurred the line because he can’t write about reality. I’m sorry, but this is a crass insult to writers of fiction and nonfiction--a book that denies both genres their right to exist independently, which they do for good reason. If a white middle class fiction writer wants to imagine himself as a black African, that’s obviously fine, great even, but it should be done for some purpose, certainly ironically. There is no fictional purpose here. There is no fiction here.

Comment by hugo — December 23, 2006 @ 2:23 pm

i would have much preferred an actual analysis of the text to a meditation on the writer’s own incurious nature. the point about there being conflicts in other parts of africa more worth focusing on rung particularly hollow for me, in light of brottman’s crass and indifferent treatment of the lost boys’ ordeal - i too found the “i know the feeling” crack particularly offensive. if brottman is more interested in exhibiting his own solipsism than in considering the literary merits of a novel, i suppose that’s his right - just find someone who’s capable of turning their intellectual energies outward to write the next review.

with regard to hugo’s comments, i don’t see what the point is about maintaining the sanctity of fiction and non-fiction. is the idea that by writing of work of what is basically historical fiction, eggers has destroyed the distiction between the fiction and non-fiction? why should that bother us, and more importantly, how is that even possible? also, i’m confused about the contention that eggers should have approached his chosen point of view ironically. it seems obvious to me that the most meaningful way to relate this ordeal is to do so earnestly.

Comment by evgeni from magnitogorsk — December 26, 2006 @ 12:31 am