Towering over the Giants

Followers of best-selling writer Dave Eggers and his arch literary journal, “McSweeney’s Quarterly,” know what to expect with each issue: a signature piece of work.

But at UCLA’s Royce Hall on Thursday, fans had no idea how Eggers would conceptualize a show spinning off “McSweeney’s” No. 6, a hardcover issue of the quarterly that includes a music CD. They Might Be Giants, the Grammy Award-winning alternative pop music duo, composed and performed most of the tracks, each of which corresponds to a story, essay or piece of art in the journal.

It would seem only arts lovers of a certain quirky sensibility would be intrigued by the players in the show’s title: “McSweeney’s vs. They Might Be Giants,” but the 1,800-seat hall was filled to near capacity.

The touring show, which changes from city to city, is billed as “a queer and curious collision of music and literature” and, much like “McSweeney’s,” is hard to define. In one show, a writer smashed a guitar on stage. Other performances have featured a couple and their 8-year-old daughter playing music and showing slides picked up at flea markets. Eggers has read with exotic dancers performing behind him, and his opening acts have included an expert on killer whales.

Thursday’s three-hour show, the tour’s only West Coast performance, was tame by comparison. The first half featured pieces read by Sarah Vowell, a contributing editor and storyteller on public radio’s “This American Life”; Zadie Smith, the best-selling author of “White Teeth”; and Eggers. In the darkened hall, the three read while standing at a lectern as They Might Be Giants played background music and quirky interludes while colored lights flashed.

Vowell, a history buff, played for and got big laughs with her essay on the prospect of a weekend getaway to Salem, Mass., where, she noted in a dry, girlish manner, the witch trials had become a kind of marketing tool for the tourist industry.

Smith, a 28-year-old native of London, gave the evening’s most thoughtful offering. With her hair back in a red bandanna, she read a modern-day love story called “The Girl With Bangs,” about a free-spirited college girl whose dark hair hangs over her eyes.

Eggers took the stage last, in jeans and an untucked plaid shirt. He brought the house down with a short story about a 13-year-old boy who pines for a married woman. “This is a story about Mrs. Gunderson,” he told the crowd, “and it gets dirty.” At 5 feet 11 inches tall, with problematic curly brown hair, he managed to come across as sweet and funny and crude at the same time.

He clutched both sides of the lectern when he read but threw his body into the words. At one point, he had to stop and compose himself to keep from cracking up. His story included asides on bad ‘70s and ‘80s music, prompting the band to kick in with riffs from “Fly Like an Eagle” by the Steve Miller Band and “Eye in the Sky” by the Alan Parsons Project.

After intermission, They Might Be Giants took over the rest of the show, urging fans to leave their seats and congregate by the stage. Eggers fans began heading to the lobby to wait for the book signing.

Eggers, 33, has been a literary star since the publication in 2000 of his seriocomic memoir, “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.” His following also is built on his iconoclastic image. He sells his work mostly through independent bookstores, for instance, donating some of his proceeds to the nonprofit tutoring lab he founded last year in San Francisco, 826 Valencia.

He is known for his inventiveness, giving each edition of “McSweeney’s” a distinctive look and feel. “McSweeney’s” No. 7, for instance, is a series of booklets slipped into a hardcover shell and held with a large rubber band. The cloth-covered No. 6 includes reproductions of poet Robert Lowell’s letters and postcards collected by photographer Walker Evans, printed on heavy cream-colored stock.

“McSweeney’s” fans collect each issue of the journal, as if they were first-edition books. Some, including No. 6, are very hard to find. Angela Serratore, 17, a high school senior who lives in Sherman Oaks, is already worried about going to school at Smith College in Northampton, Mass. “My biggest fear is that I’m moving away, and I’m not going to be able to find ‘McSweeney’s’ anywhere,” she says. “That was one of the first things I thought of when I got my acceptance letter.”

Fan Elizabeth Nelli, 20, an assistant at Dutton’s Brentwood Bookstore, simply wanted to see Eggers and hear his voice. “We love Dave,” she says of his followers. “We want to know what Dave’s like.... Dave has my brain. He has my same neurotic thought process. He’ll ramble on about something that won’t ever happen and just freak out on it for eight pages.”

First in line for autographs at UCLA was Rick Martin, 47, who works as a room service assistant at a resort hotel. Eggers seemed so approachable on stage, just the way he did in his memoir, Martin says. “I don’t really like to read,” he says. “I’ll read the Bible, and that’s it.” He points to a friend’s copy of Eggers’ memoir. “That,” he says, “I wasn’t able to put down.”

Also in line was Brenda Hurst, 52, a print advertising manager for NBC. Carrying a canvas tote full of early issues of “McSweeney’s,” along with Eggers’ memoir and his recent novel, “You Shall Know Our Velocity,” Hurst said she had a blast but thought the first half of the show was too short. “I could have easily sat longer,” she says. “I love storytelling, and that’s what this is. It’s like you were a little kid again.”

By 11 p.m., dozens of people had joined the line. Eggers talked to each person, and in each book, he wrote something different or drew a funny picture.