You Shall Know My Stupidity

Dave Eggers is my favorite author - that's why I read his books, website, journal, and occasionally his magazine. His latest book, How We Are Hungry, is a collection of short stories. When I read it, each sentence displaced the last as The Most Profound Thing Ever:

They talk very little. She knows he is a telephone-systems programmer of some kind, connects "groups of users" somehow. She knows he comes from Montana, and knows his voice is like an older man's, weaker than it should be, wheezy and prone to cracking. He is not handsome; his nose is almost piggish and his teeth are chipped in front, leaving a triangular gap, as if he'd tried to bite a tiny pyramid. He's not attractive in any way she would call sexual, but she still wants to be with him and not others.

* * *

GOD: I own you like I own the caves.
THE OCEAN: Not a chance. No comparison.
GOD: I made you. I could tame you.
THE OCEAN: At one time, maybe. But not now.
GOD: I will come to you, freeze you, break you.
THE OCEAN: I will spread myself like wings. I am a billion tiny feathers. You have no idea what's happened to me.

* * *

The hotel in Portree had been awarded too many stars - it was well-made and charmless. Twelve different newspapers fanned out on a heavily lacquered table in the drawing room, a robust fire chewing its cereal in the corner, the ceilings were vaulted and the beds were canopied, but there was a sickly tint to the lighting, the smell of rain and frustration coming from the walls. The only softening touch was a cat, sleeping atop the bar. It yawned at me, showing its plasticine teeth.

My man crush is the featured interview of this week's Onion AV Club:

O: Your new anthology How We Are Hungry mostly seems to center on isolated, lonely people who are struggling with desire. Is there any particular reason you kept returning to that theme?

DE: I would disagree about "isolated" or "lonely." Those are two things that I don't know very well, so I can't write about them. I think that most of the characters are people who aren't settled in what they're doing, and maybe have been uprooted in one way or another, by an event in the world or their own restlessness. Most of them are abroad and looking for something. This is what the hunger is about: whether they're hungry for some kind of affection, or something else.

O: "Isolated and lonely" doesn't just mean that they're by themselves. It seems like these characters don't communicate well, and that the theme of desire comes from the theme of being unable to share something important, being unable to externalize something key and internal.

DE: Well yeah, that's well-said. I can't improve on that very much. There are certain things that I know run throughout the book, certain things in the way that I chose the order, so it would make sense and develop in a way. Then again, you really don't always see all of the themes yourself. The idea of them having these things inside themselves that they can't share was not necessarily intended, but I like that.

Right. So, as I said, I read the collection, paid close attention to it, and didn't come close to understanding the theme, the connectivity.

Please halt all insistence that I should be a writer until I can grasp these kinds of things.