Wild McSweeney Wit Careens From Silly to ‘Heartbreaking’

McSweeney’s is a small (very small) zine for the junior Harper’s set. With insignificant, annoying and trivial subject matter ranging from murder mysteries in Indian villages to pirate adventures and life on the moon, it’s as if it’s produced by a troop of Boy Scouts. While it may or may not represent a precious, inconsequential return to the belle epoque, one is advised to throw it across the room.

I should add that most of the above paragraph conforms to the requirements delineated in the section of McSweeneys.net that instructs, “If you are reviewing or writing about McSweeney’s, use these words and phrases.” I used ‘em all.

If you’re immoderately into the culture of the hugely hip and diagnosably disillusioned, you may already be familiar with the hyper-ironic prose of Dave Eggers, editor of the acclaimed, defunct Might Magazine, author of “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius” and editor of McSweeney’s, the aforementioned print and Web-based satiredom.

Just as Eggers--a fly in the ointment of journalism-as-usual--assists journalists reviewing McSweeney’s, he also has invited readers to wreak havoc at Amazon.com by posting their reviews of “A Heartbreaking Work” that conform to these guidelines: “a) The review rates the book with five stars. b) The review betrays the fact that the reviewer has not read the book. c) The reviewer has other things on his or her mind, or is confused.”

This bit of mischief-making caused many irony-wannabes to descend on Amazon.com and post cleverish reviews. (The writer of the review that McSweeney’s deems most droll will win a lifetime subscription to the print zine when the contest ends next month.) The editors have so far selected one review as a front-runner that reads in part: “Illustrated with soft watercolors of Irish country life, the tale is amusing and features fun facts about World War II kitchens and cooking.”

Other amusing reviews state, “If you like Chinese history, ancient, extinct fish, or biographies of 19th century railroad magnates, you’ll like this book.” And “Like a tumbler full of hemlock with one of those olive-swords you get sometimes, ‘Heartbreaking Work’ is an allegorical juggernaut, paralleling (if loosely) the supernova that is designated hitter Randy Bush.”

Another McSweeney’s groupie posits “A Heartbreaking Work” as involving murder in London high society and adds, “Detractors have been quick to criticize the book’s overreliance on valuable antiques as a source of psychological insight.”

In reality, detractors have said that “A Heartbreaking Work” reveals a “relentless knowingness” and that, with the author’s barrage of preemptive self-striking, “Eggers is begging for compliments.” These thoughts are expanded on and laced with genuine praise in Slate in the form of an e-mail correspondence between Jodi Kantor and Michael Hirschorn at https:// slate.msn.com/code/BookClub/ BookClub.asp?Show=2/21/00& idMessage=4651&idBio;=147.

The knowingness is in fact the bedrock of “A Heartbreaking Work,” a postmodern “anti-memoir” that is to some extent about Eggers’ life after the death of his parents (one month apart). The deaths left the twentysomething Eggers responsible for the upbringing of his 8-year-old brother. Heartbreaking as this might sound--and as the title invites/mocks--Eggers’ tale transcends narrative to become “meta-fiction,” a wildly self-referential, self-defensive rhetorical style that employs wads of irony, wit and sarcasm, revealing ubiquitous Prufrockian self-doubt. (For an excerpt, go to https://www.simonandschuster.com/excerpt.cfm?isbn=0684863472.)

Some have loved the style, which includes a preface, a list of “Rules and Suggestions for Enjoyment of This Book” and a 20-page acknowledgments section complete with special mail-in offer, flowchart of the book’s themes, a guide to symbols and metaphors and many acknowledgments of all the gimmickry. But as Amazon’s Mary Park wrote in her positive review: “Eggers comes from the most media-saturated generation in history--so much so that he can’t feel an emotion without the sense that it’s already been felt for him. What may seem like postmodern noodling is really just Eggers writing about pain in the only honest way available to him.”

If you’re a disenfranchised youth unable to cough up the hard cash for the hardcover, there is much Eggers-esque parched wit to be found free of charge on the wire-ways. At McSweeneys.net--don’t go to McSweeneys.com, which is the home page of the nearly-too-guileless-to-not-be-an-Eggers-gag McSweeney family--one will encounter smirking stories from the likes of David Foster Wallace, Rick “Ice Storm” Moody and lesser-known purveyors of quirk.

Current articles include “The Ten Worst Films of 1942, as Reviewed by Ezra Pound Over Italian Radio” and a series of kooky lists such as “Freudian Blender Settings” (Low detach, transfer, censor; Med fixate, project, deny; High obsess, panic, castrate). The archive is chock-full of wry mirth such as a review of the author’s own daydreams and Ben Greenman’s “Fragments From Elian! The Musical,” in which Freddie Prinze Jr. plays the grown Elian Gonzales recalling his childhood (“Mi vida was loca”).

For more by and about Eggers, peek at his Slate diary (https://slate.msn.com/diary/99-12-13/diary.asp?iMsg=1), in which he offers an abridged history of hand-holding and states his intention to reissue the 1934 tome “Rats, Lice and History.”

One may also find interest in the recent Salon interview, found in the “Mothers Who Think” column. In his book, mother Dave reflects on his brother/son, considering, “His brain is my laboratory. My depository.” For his views on brother-mothering, see https://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2000/02/22/eggers/index.html).

And for those whose interest has been piqued enough to choose to peruse the anti-memoir but who find that reading veritable print-based parchment gives them a headache, the author, in his protracted acknowledgments section, offers to exchange the book for a floppy disc version.

“The digital version,” he writes, “will be interactive as we expect our digital things to be.” The author suggests that readers use their word processor’s search-and-replace function to change the name of the characters, “from the main characters to the smallest cameo. (This can be you! You and your pals!),” he writes, in mock-adver-speak and a dollop of wry, cynical promotion. In spite of himself.

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Erika Milvy writes about arts, entertainment and whatnot from her home in San Francisco. She can be reached at erika@well.com.