Mo' meta blues

After the Eggers bookreading in the City, I overheard one hipster savant say to another: "He even uses the same font as David Foster Wallace."

He was wrong, of course. Flip through "Infinite Jest" and look at the serifs on the G's. Compare the finials of the c's. Not even close. Same ballparks, different teams.

But it's an unavoidable comparison, that between Wallace and Eggers. Though their scopes are different, they have harmonic voices and styles, vis-a-vis parentheticals and asides, hyper-self-awareness and use of terms like "vis-a-vis."

There are many other similarities, some more superficial than others. The Champaign, Ill., roots. The clouds on the cover. The diagrams. Siblings dealing with dead parent/s with varying degrees of grief and comprehension. At one point, Eggers worries that Toph, the Phoebe to his Holden, "will grow up to kill kittens by putting them in garbage bags and swinging them against brick walls" -- like Randy Lenz?

Countless are the hacks that mimic this style (look no farther than the McSweeney's letters page for evidence; hell, look no farther than this review). But Eggers rises above mere imitation. Way, way above.

Having followed a wild preface (don't neglect the copyright page) that sings the smart, deadpan wit of said McSweeney's, the first chapter is a sudden punch to the gut.

Coincidentally, the morning I started the book I saw a bald woman in a Gatsby cap, enjoying herself at a tennis match. I caught myself thinking, "That's what's great about cancer: You finally look great in a Gatsby cap." And that is the way cancer is often thought of: some trade-offs, some winners, some losers. We never think of what happens next, or how dirty it all is. But Eggers paints with a realism and honesty that unnerves. I literally cringed at the described pains, physical and otherwise.

What's great, even unconventional, is that he doesn't cast his parents in angelic hues. He is as candid about their flaws as he is about his own.

He has a knack for revealing the thoughts that all of us have, though we think ourselves unique in having them. To wit:

-the child's romance with being orphaned and the "Home Alone" sort of exhilaration;

-the vision of a child as an empty vessel, a tabula rasa with which one can undo the perceived errors of one's parents;

-the thought, during crises, that one should be taking notes because it -- the crisis, the suicide, the whatever -- will make a kick-ass story later on;

-attaching meaning to everything, appropriate or not.

The acuity with which he captures the cliches and self-importance of Gen X pre-Yuppiedom should make anyone with as much as a tattoo or extraneous piercing cower in shame. "By God, you're right -- I am lame." But hidden in the skewering is a celebration: of youth, of possibility, of folly, all without any "gather ye rosebuds" lecturing.

There are frequent riffs on healing via exhibitionism, the thought that one can end suffering by sharing it. It is a '90s invention that has shooed hundreds to appearances on "Sally Jessy Raphael" and thousands others to Web diaries. It shooed Eggers to "The Real World" and, when denied there (thank God), this book.

But it's more than a primer on these lives we lead. There's also the survivor's guilt, the brothers' mutual love, the search for connection, the constant horniness -- all issues handily spelled out in the preface. The brilliance of this (parody of a) memoir -- and, in a way, the point of it, too -- is that Eggers writes with the authority of someone beyond his years (God, he's not even 30). That, then, is the lingering question: Have his tragedies stolen his youth, or have they pushed him to appreciate it more than all the rest of us motherfuckers?

And, oh, the writing! Sentence by sentence, page by page, it's all a joy to read, and it clips along at full-gallop. He interrupts himself, characters come out of character, and just when he approaches conventionality, he turns the narrative on its head. He tries some very complex, difficult things (not the least of which being remembering his parents without being hokey) but never does he lose control.

(That said, the gimmicks sometimes annoy, as though Eggers is making fun of the reader for enjoying him when he plays it straight -- getting too sincere; must detach!)

I don't mean to fawn -- or maybe I do -- but it's true. The title, that is, and how it, like the book itself, is at once ironic, post-ironic and post-post-ironic (and so on). Beyond that, it's just a kick in the pants to say, when asked what one is reading, "Why, this here is a heartbreaking work of staggering genius." Cheap "Who's on First"-inspired gag or not, I love it.