Art Metropole

#05133

Mono Kultur #25, Dave Eggers: The Heart of the Matter (Autumn 2010)

Artist

Dave Eggers

Date

2010

Publisher

Mono Kultur

Format

Periodicals

Details

Softcover

Size

15 × 20 cm

Length

0 

Description

Born in 1970, Eggers grew up in a perfectly normal suburb near Chicago and graduated from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana with a degree in journalism and an interest in painting. Things changed drastically, however, when both his parents died of cancer soon after college, and at 21 he assumed guardianship over his younger brother Toph. After moving to San Francisco, where he’s been based ever since, Eggers began working as a freelance graphic designer, and founded Might magazine , one of the quintessential publications documenting 90s Generation X angst and sensibility. Eggers chronicled this period in his autobiographic debut novel A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius , published in 2000: a ferocious, frequently hilarious monument to self-consciousness and self-doubt with its looping, reflexive narrative recalling the unspoken preoccupations of its readership, a neurotic generation thirsting for a new literary voice. Widely praised and even short-listed for the renowned Pulitzer Prize, Eggers’ memoir presaged a tidal shift in the American literary scene: Philip Roth, Don DeLillo, Richard Ford, et al suddenly felt a little dusty and, well, old, to be replaced by Dave Eggers, Michael Chabon, and Jonathan Franzen and Safran Foer. With You Shall Know Our Velocity! , Eggers confirmed his seemingly effortless talent for portraying a generation continuously on the run without ever really arriving.

Interview by Sam Cate-Gumpert

Artwork by Dave Eggers

Cover Illustration by Patrick Klose

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