How We Are Hungry : Stories

Rating:
Summary: Eggers can do better
Review: Personally, I feel that Dave Eggers is a brilliant writer. Reading some of the other reviews on AHWOSG and YSKOV, I can see that others strongly disagree. Clearly these are people with no sense of humor;thats right, I said it. Eggers' self-absorbed rhetoric (aka "rants") are beautifully written and hysterically observant. Some people have zero tolerance for the self-obsessed, and that's fine. Go find another author. As Eggers says in AHWOSG, only the self-absorbed are truly interesting. How true. . . Go read Hemingway or something equally awful if you like shallow characters.

Anyways, I'm off subject. Daves Eggers' latest book, "How We are Hungry," is, by far, his weakest. I was ecstatic to see this talented author show off his talent for short stories, assuming that it would be "staggering." I was wrong. A few of the stories are indeed brilliant, "your mother and I," "climbing to the window, pretending to dance," "quiet," and the brief "about a man who began flying after meeting her," are all classic Eggers. But the others are just mediocre. Which, i would argue, is even worse than being awful.
Overall, I found much of this book to be forgettable. If you are already an Eggers fan, than of course you should read it you lazy bastard! But if you're looking for a place to start, AHWOSG or YSKOV are far superior.
EGGERS RULES! (most of the time)


Rating:
Summary: I think you have to be a certain type to like this stuff....
Review: ....otherwise the writing of D. Eggers tends to strike many readers as cloying, annoying, trying too hard to be cool, and sophomoric. "Aren't I clever?" runs like a blaring subtitle on every page. The pretension can all but gag you. In any event, it seems to appeal to a certain pimple-picking crowd, and for those readers, I'm happy they have something to appease them. But on another note-- in the bio Eggers states that he has recently contributed to a book on the subject of teachers needing to be paid more. This strikes me as sort of funny, considering an article that recently appeared in a magazine about the questionable "charities" he runs. The UNPAID teaching volunteers who work at his tutoring house in San Francisco, for which he enjoys taking credit for, are not only never compensated for anything on any level, but were recently asked to help foot the bill ($100.00 to $150.00 each) for the premiere party of the movie "The Incredibles" which Eggers was sponsoring (this being a movie that earned almost three times as much as "Finding Nemo"). Staggering Disregard.

Rating:
Summary: gorgeous and startling stories
Review: Beginning a Dave Eggers' piece makes me feel a bit like Rita, the protagonist in "Up the Mountain Coming Down Slowly": freezing, exhausted, hallucinating, and unable to bare the thought of continuing to walk up Kilimanjaro. But my backpack isn't heavy with wet long underwear and malaria medications, just with internal resistance (which is, perhaps, heavier.) He is too lucky. He is too clever. His hair is too curly. Fair or not, most probably not, when I read Dave Eggers' work a planet of assumptions descends upon me, and I'm forced to prepare myself in a way I don't with other writers. I square my shoulders against the wit. I arm myself against inside jokes I will never understand. But indeed, alas, in "How We Are Hungry" he disarms me once again. Not by rattling off arcane references to shipbuilding practices of the 17th century. Just by standing in the center of this collection exposed as a real, maturing writer with a voice that is startlingly human, aware of its own incompletion, and terrified.

The most provocative moments emerge in these stories when the fortifications of rhetoric and formalism breakdown: when a girl is running down a mountain, or admiring how good a boy looks underwater, or a mother is filling with reasons and rage as she waits for her to son to get home. But the most poignant force propelling these stories is the voice of a bewildered, angry, lost "American" citizen who has forfeited even the luxury of alienation in the 21st century. Unlike Kit in "The Sheltering Sky" (which several of the best travel stories invokes), the characters in "How We Are Hungry" can't just run off to the desert to join harems: they've got to get home to their jobs, families, student loan payments. Eggers' attempts to disentangle the muddy national grief, even shame, that seizes so many of us are graceful, tender, and painful, and they display not just a biting intelligence, but the fine, fine heart of a real writer. I can't wait to see what he comes up with next. I may even leave my backpack at home.

Rating:
Summary: Eggers writes a book about rich attention-starved idiots
Review: Dave Egger's book How we are Hungry is a collection of short stories that are lame, boring, has only superficial rich people as characters, a lot big words no one ever uses, sentences that sound good but make no sense, and uses geographic locations all over the world but most of the action could have taken place in any town in America.
The binding of the book is black leather, no blurbs, an elastic strap on the back (for what reason I have no clue,) a ribbon bookmarker, and a McSweeny's hippogriff engraved into the leather. Joanna Rose from The Oregonian said, "One may not be able to reliably judge a book by its cover, but sometimes the cover is right. This one is rare-looking, and rich and important-looking. It looks like a classic." That is incredible logic; if a book has a nice binding, it must be a classic. Maybe next time Slush Pile comes out the binding should be made of gold and Slush Pile spelled out with pearls and rubies.
How we are Hungry costs $22 because of this `classic' binding. It is fitting that only the upper class owns this book because all the characters are extremely rich. I said "owns" and not read because to Dave Eggers and his fans it is more important to own a certain book than to have actually read and understood it.
The characters of How we are Hungry have no real development except that they are rich. All of his females are useless and their only desire is to get married, and the males don't really exist. If they do exist they are only stock characters. In the story, "Climbing to the Window, Pretending to Dance," there is a brother named Fish who is rich and pays for his brother Adam's hospital bills, because his brother Adam keeps trying to kill himself. You never find out why Fish cares or why Adam keeps trying to kill himself. Eggers characters have no motivation for their behavior except attention, but why they want the attention Eggers never says. I don't think he has the intelligence to think about anything.
The hunger Eggers is talking about is the hunger for attention. All his characters are rich people who have everything, can travel around the world anytime they want, own horses, have full health coverage, no bills, and don't have to worry about anything material in the world so they fiend for attention. I don't know how this book could be published, get good reviews, and even be written in 2004 America while the country has so many different problems. This is what the literary establishment hands the American people, a $22 book that has only attention-starved rich people as characters. No wonder reading is down!


Rating:
Summary: Fantastic
Review: Dave Eggers has one of the most captivating voices of any writer I've ever encountered. His characters are lifelike because of all the unique little twists he applies to them. The stories in this collection are varied in topic and style, and I enjoyed each in a very different way. But Eggers to me is the type of writer who could write about anything or anyone, and the result would be fantastic- his grip on language and his precise use of it makes a reader take joy in the words themselves, independent of what they are saying. You will NOT be disappointed with this collection.

Rating:
Summary: It's good to be hungry.
Review: Dave Eggers is a great writer. Some like to say he's too ironic. Others like to say he's too sincere. And that's because he's both ironic and sincere, which makes him a paradox, and also makes him easy to misunderstand, willfully or not. And really, what we're talking about here is not Dave Eggers, but the man's writing. Remember that. Eggers' writing is ironic and sincere and beautiful and well-crafted, and it is challenging. Which means that it might not be what you think it is at first glance, even when you like it right away. Eggers has a great mind. And he has an expansive eye for detail, for characters and flaws and very real absurdities, and for the joys and pains of life. For that I thank him.

Rating:
Summary: how we are hungry....for more
Review: David eggers first book, a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, was almost universally praised by critics. The following are all direct quotes from critics concerning ahwosg. The Tampa bay tribune writes "we can forget about hearing from Salinger. Hes been replaced by a stunning new writer. His name is Dave eggers". the London review of books writes "eggers-self-reliant, transcendent, expansive- is Emerson's ideal young American." finally, the Washington post writes "eggers evokes the terrible beauty of youth like a young bob Dylan." its safe to say that very few debut books by a modern author have been met with such widespread critical acclaim and commercial success. That being said, how we are hungry can be read in the following ways:

1. as a fascinating companion to eggers first two full length works.
2. as an often pointless, always pretentious exercise in post-modern noodling.

It is my opinion that it should be read as the former, but many have obviously seen it as the latter. Some of the most common criticism I have seen, in regards to this work, is that although eggers creates fascinating characters, they often stagnate on the pages and seem to fail to achieve anything memorable. As someone who appreciates not only storytelling but artistic merit, my reply to these types of objections would be the following: yes, it is true that eggers characters often seem to be drifting through life without any specific aim and that often times many of them seem to exhibit many of the same characteristics. But, Perhaps instead of criticizing this fact, we should attempt to understand why this "staggeringly talented writer"(the new york times book review) chooses to write stories about these kind of characters.
A close study of Hemingway's classic portrayal of "the lost generation" in the sun also rises and its short story companion in our time may lend perspective on the work of eggers. much like in our time is taken to its logical end in the sun also rises, how we are hungry can be seen as a formally challenging prelude (even though it comes out after his first two novels) and a key to both the style and content of a heartbreaking work and you shall know our velocity. Both these authors have been praised as voices of there generation, and both can be seen as "love-em or hate-em" type authors. The difference is that Hemingway went on to write stories that transcended the scope of his early work, and built one of the greatest bodies of work in modern literature. It is yet to be seen what eggers plans on doing with the rest of his career. I, for one, am eagerly awaiting his decision.
as far as recomendations go , if your a fan of eggers, buy it. if you
want to be a fan, get a heartbreaking work of staggering genius and you shall know our velocity! first, then turn to this. if you are not a fan, avoid at all costs, unless you want even more reasons to despise this author.

Rating:
Summary: Great writing, interesting characters, occasional plots
Review: Eggers's first book, A HEARTBREAKING WORK OF STAGGERING GENIUS, was amazing (although I've talked to several people about it and nobody can really remember what the story is about-it's just great style). His second book wasn't as fresh, mostly because the style was no longer new.

This, his third book, a collection of short stories, reads more like a collection of ideas that never grew up to be bigger. Some, only a page or two long, never even made it to short-storyhood. His writing is fantastic, but I felt like, for most of the stories, I was reading about him or someone he knows. The characters are interesting, but all tend to act and sound the same. His stories have a bit of desperate sadness to them, but they never really go anywhere. Sometimes this is nice. Other times it would be nice to go somewhere with these interesting people. I was a little disappointed that my favorite story in the book is one I read years ago in a short story anthology. It's a great story told from the point of view of a dog. Perhaps I'm being unfair to expect to be blown away by everything Eggar's writes, but there are so many fantastic lines, brilliant descriptions and details laced throughout his stories that I want the stories themselves to be as good.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful collection
Review: How We Are Hungry is my favorite Eggers book. By losing the oxymoronic tone of sincerity and preemptive defense -- not that this voice hadn't worked well, particularly in his memoir, but still... -- Eggers manages to write a few of the best conventional and unconventional short stories I've read over the past few years. "Up the Mountain Coming Down Slowly" (did the Observer really say "It may well be the last great twentieth-century short story?) and "After I Was Thrown In The River And Before I Drowned" are easily worth any money and time you might drop into this book.

Of course, for those who like post-modern noodling, there is some of that too. Though, I must say, even if you don't -- I don't -- dealing with it in short pieces (5 pages without words doesn't require much investment) feels entirely more like hearing a joke than being the butt of one. And no matter what you think about Eggers -- "talented hypester and organizer of tax-and-tutition-funded failed-writers"... tutition? -- his jokes are almost always funny. He writes beautiful sentences too.

Rating:
Summary: Doesn't live up to his prior novels
Review: The title of this novel poses a good question. How ARE we hungry? I, for one, am hungry for a novel that is funny, poignant, clever, genre-stretching, and at least a few times makes me laugh so hard I snort something (milk, preferably, but it could be anything) through my nose. I'm talking about a book like "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius", of course, which "How We Are Hungry" is definitely not. I suppose an author isn't required to follow one book up with another of the same vein. However, an author is expected to stick to a certain level of quality, and if you burst out of the gates with a brilliant first novel subsequent novels are always highly scrutinized.

Perhaps my problem is that I know TOO much about Eggers himself. Since his first novel was a memoir and since I pay attention to his McSweeney's Press and related ventures (which lately has been as much a pulpit for pushing liberal agendas as a literary outlet) it is hard for me to separate Dave Eggers from his fiction. 1) I cannot help seeing Eggers in every one of his fictional characters and thinking each story sounds like something Eggers experienced and then translated directly to the page with a different name. 2) I cannot help noticing that half of his short stories are thinly veiled attempts to push liberal anti-Bush agendas.

I realize that EVERY story is actually something the author experiences and then translates to the page with a different name. That's fiction. However, there's a problem when you can't stop thinking about it. Also, I have no problem with a liberal anti-Bush agenda, but there's a place a liberal anti-Bush agenda DOESN'T belong. An example of a place it doesn't belong is an Academy Award acceptance speech. Another place it doesn't belong is literary fiction. Especially thinly veiled anti-Bush liberal agendas. If you're going to do it, it shouldn't be thinly veiled. It should either be thickly veiled or not veiled at all.

Okay, but all this is sort of secondary to the fact that the book just wasn't that great. There are some clever moments, but unlike his previous works the clever moments aren't funny, and clever without funny is just annoying and pretentious. There are short-short stories that are two pages long and serve to be nothing other than voice experiments. There are five blank pages entitled "There Are Some Things He Should Keep to Himself" that don't serve to evoke a second thought or even a grin as the reader flips immediately past. None of the characters seem to have much at stake. None of them even seem that compelling or emotionally complex. There is one story about a man who is desperate not to die alone and it's one of the few stories that could have possibly been emotionally deep, but instead Eggers tells the story as NOTES ABOUT A STORY, which is clever, but it ends up distancing the reader from the whole thing and making it more of a workshop exercise. Had the story been a real story, it might have been overly sentimental and sappy, but sometimes a good author needs to tackle such subject matter and prove himself to be a good author by dealing with such material well.

I realize I'm being very hard on this book, much harder than I would be on a first book or on any other book whose author hadn't previously written something I loved so much. Sorry, Dave Eggers. I'll still read your next novel.