Shareware
Ian Sansom
- A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
Picador, 415 pp, £14.99, July 2000, ISBN 0 330 48454 0
The title of Dave Eggers’s book is fair warning: it prepares the reader to put on a happy face. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius comes emulsioned with the kind of compliments and absurd little pronunciamentos that stretch credulity. ‘The force and energy of this book could power a train,’ apparently. Goodness knows what kind of vehicle you might be able to start up if you could harness the force and energy of Ulysses or King Lear – a giant Ariane V, powered by a 170-ton liquid-propellant rocket motor assisted by twin 270-ton solid-fuel boosters, perhaps. Forcing one’s way beyond the countdown of air-kisses and back-slappings and venturing on into the book itself, you’re hit on the very first page with a neat little riff on the usual formalities:
You are not logged in
- If you have already registered please login here
- If you are using the site for the first time please register here
- If you would like access to all 12,000 articles subscribe here
- Institutions or university library users please login here
- Learn more about our institutional subscriptions here
Vol. 22 No. 22 · 16 November 2000 » Ian Sansom » Shareware
page 23 | 2012 words