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You’ll Have To Save That For Another Time by Dave Eggers and Noah Van Sciver.

This is pretty, pretty, pretty cool.

So I’m reading 52 books this year—a book a week and this was my first one. I’m a big Dave Eggers fan. So, I’m not sure what I could say about this book that would not make me sound like a fifty year-old man, but what I liked about this was it was a combination of Dave Eggers from his memoir (for really the first time since A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius), and a mix of his more recent nonfiction. He combines the excitement and personal positivity of AHWOSG and the staid, clear life details from Zeitoun or What Is The What.

In this context, I feel like I gained some perspective of my father and his generation and their frustration with the lack of American ingenuity and outsourcing we see today. It was a younger man’s look at, say, his father’s struggle and I read quite a bit of my Dad in Alan Clay. So, it was interesting to realize that the book is really about trying to find new meaning in life as we get older and less useful.

4 months ago 1 note

“I spend seven or eight hours… each time I try to write. Most of that time is spent stalling, which means that for every seven or eight hours I spend pretending to write - sitting in the writing position, looking at a screen - I get, on average, one hour of actual work done. It’s a terrible, unconscionable ratio. This kind of life is at odds with the romantic notions I once had, and most people have, of the writing life. We imagine more movement, somehow. We imagine it on horseback. Camelback? We imagine convertibles, windswept cliffs, lighthouses. We don’t imagine - or I didn’t imagine - quite so much sitting. I know it makes me sound pretty naive, that I would expect to be writing while, say, skiing. But still. The utterly sedentary nature of this task gets to me every day.”

—

Dave Eggers, via austinkleon.

I’ve been basically spending my first week of break just working around the idea of establishing a work flow for the four fucking projects I said I would finish/start over this break. More than anything else I feel that same level of inspiration that Eggers is talking about here in this article about Writing Life.

It can be workmanlike, it can be a grind, and it can take years to make anything of any value. But if, at the end of it all, there’s a Gabby who holds the words to her heart and rides the subway through the night, back to Oakland, thinking of what those words on a page did to her, then the work is worth doing.

In the meantime, I’ve spent the week fucking around with organizing my day and I’m not really getting anything done. Though I feel like Merlin Mann’s stuff is helping me with my procrastination issue and forcing me to figure it out. I think I’ve finally got it sorted out today.

(via austinkleon)

5 months ago 461 notes

“The worst sort of critics are (analogy coming) butterfly collectors - they chase something, ostensibly out of their search for beauty, then, once they get close, they catch that beautiful something, they kill it, they stick a pin through its abdomen, dissect it and label it. The whole process, I find, is not a happy or healthy one. Someone with his or her own shit figured out, without any emotional problems or bitterness or envy, instead of killing that which he loves, will simply let the goddamn butterfly fly, and instead of capturing and killing it and sticking it in a box, will simply point to it - “Hey everyone, look at that beautiful thing” - hoping everyone else will see the beautiful thing he has seen.”

—

Are you taking any steps-are there any steps to be taken-to keep shit real?

This is an interview with Dave Eggers, posted by mattfraction, because he’s really good at the internets. This is generally my belief on book critics, and I would be lying if I said Dave Eggers and McSweeney’s is not a massive influence for what we’re trying to do here at ADK MOGUL. So say yes and thanks for reading.

You should really read the whole thing.

(via adkmogulbooks)

5 months ago 37 notes

I’ve been staring at this photo of Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida for a bit now, I don’t know why, but I just really like it. It’s from Interview Magazine, when they were promoting Away We Go.

7 months ago 20 notes

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.

7 months ago 3 notes

From A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. I read this book just before moving to New York and now I’m re-reading it, remembering how much I absolutely loved it nearly eight years ago.

Overwhelming positivity permeates every sentence of this book. As if the lesson here is to live life utterly and completely to the fullest, and, for me, to be the best brother I can be.

1 year ago 7 notes

This is Dave Eggers on education and the birth of his 826 Valencia writing center at Ted. This guy, and I know some of you will roll your eyes at me for saying this, but he’s a pretty big inspiration. And I don’t want to say anything at this point, but this summer you’ll find out exactly why this video is pretty important to me going forward.

1 year ago 0 notes

Dave Eggers interview on the screenplay for "Where the Wild Things Are".

3 years ago 3 notes

#dave eggers

Dave Eggers interview on the screenplay for "Where the Wild Things Are".

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