Lip Lit’s writer you should know: Dave Eggers
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I have a crush.
He’s sort of famous. He’s tall, has curly dark hair, and has one of those oh-so-charming cheeky smiles. And no, it isn’t Austin Nicholls or Zachary Levi (although both are definitely welcome to call me). His name is Dave Eggers, and he’s a writer.
You probably know who he is, and are aware of his work. You probably either think that he writes like a pompous ass and is all gimmicks, or (like me) you think he’s a literary genius full on innovation. Okay. Genius may be pushing it a touch. But I do I find his writing honest, raw, and bleakly funny. His certainly employs moments of surreality, but they actually serve a purpose — you know that he didn’t write them just because he was high (unlike, say, Bret Easton Ellis)*.
His first novel A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, is a lightly fictionalised account of how at 22, his mother and father died of different forms of cancer within five weeks of each other, and he became his 7 year-old-brothers guardian. The only times Dave (I will call him Dave, instead of Eggers, because I clearly have a deluded sense of familiarity) makes up things, or twists the story, he tells you. Boy ain’t no James Frey.
But my crush on him isn’t just because I admire him as a writer. It’s for what he has done as a person. Dave is, like, a superhero writer. He uses his literary powers and press prowess for good!
In San Francisco in 2002 — along with teacher Ninive Calegari — Dave founded 826 Valencia, a not-for-profit tutoring centre. The centre concentrates on bringing the fun and creative back to writing. However, when he was starting it, Dave encountered an unusual problem: the site he wanted had to be used for retail. He solved this by making the front of the space into a Pirate Supply Store, which sells such necessities such as ‘Scurvy Begone’ potion. Seven other cities around the USA have since opened 826 chapters, all of them with their own unique shop fronts. As well as selling quirky items, all 826 shopfronts sell publications from Egger’s ventures. Many of the publications are part of Dave’s (and Lolla Vollen’s) Voice of Witness series, which was established to give a voice to people who may not otherwise be heard. Perhaps the two most known of these are ones that Dave wrote; What is the What and Zeitoun.
Dave wrote What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng in 2006. Years earlier, after meeting Deng, a former child-soilder from Sudan, Dave was inspired. Dave wanted Deng’s story to be told, and spent years conversing with him and taking notes. There were two hitches: 1. Deng was still taking classes in basic English, and felt like he was unable to write his story himself. 2. Dave kept getting stuck when he tried to write a conventional biography. The solution Dave found was writing the story from Deng’s perspective. And by labeling the novel as ‘fiction’ rather than ‘memoir,’ he was able to create dialogue and details that Deng had forgotten. The result is a novel that is not only horrifyingly and beautifully affecting, but one that is written with clarity and tautness. Dave later repeated a similar process with his 2009 novel Zeitoun, about a man who stays behind in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hits. In both cases, Dave didn’t take a cent of the profits. Instead, he used them to respectively establish The Valentino Achak Deng Foundation (which builds schools and learning and communication centers in Sudan) and to the Zeitoun Foundation (which continues to rebuild New Orleans).
And if all of those things don’t impress you? He co-wrote the movie Away We Go with his wife, and anything with John Krasinski has got to be good.
*Don’t get me wrong, I love me some BEE. We share a birthday, and this is enough to convince me that we are soul-mates.
