This is the back cover to some later edition of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius titled Mistakes We Knew We Were Making, which is the appendix to Dave Eggers’s memoir. I didn’t even know this existed.
I’m teaching Zeitoun in my class and it was shocking to me last night how far along Eggers has come. His voice is so different now, perhaps because he’s probably sick of hearing it, and would rather write some else’s story. Still, I like his work. Here he is in the appendix.
But upon telling this writer-friend about the idea, she said, while looking much too ravishing over an open candle and with wet hair, ‘Oh, right, like Mary McCarthy.’ There was, in the distance, the sound of thunder, and of lightning striking, presumably, a kitten. ‘Um, what do you mean, pray tell, Just like Mary McCarthy?’ I thought, while, fear-stricken, managing only ‘Huh?’ She noted that McCarthy had done almost the same thing in Memories of a Catholic Girlhood, a book about which I was of course unaware, because I am a moron.
