Dedication
Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius was probably the defining literary moment of my college era, and it helped encapsulate for me a certain attitude towards adulthood that I continue to both embrace and struggle with to this day. Its influence on my aesthetic, on the way view my life, on my desires, on the way I think and write and speak, even, cannot be understated.
Years ago, at a dinner with Maria and her mother, right before I moved to Chicago, I said I never wanted to work anywhere that would not let me wear my customary pair of black Converse All-Stars. It wasn’t so much the dictates of footwear that was important to me; what I meant at the time was that I was unready to cast aside the petty self-indulgences that up to that point defined my existence, the little idiosyncrasies I cultivated to season my persona, in favor of the settled, post-self-absorbed adulthood that was expected of me. Jean, ever patient and wise, nodded and indulged my little rant, and encouraged me to pursue this to its logical conclusion, to wring this desire dry, without really judging or guiding or telling me how I’d grow out of this.
This evening, I attended a book reading given by Mr. Eggers at Shakespeare and Co., a tiny, ancient bookstore that has long been a haven for Americans abroad in Paris—a musty, cavernous hole in the wall across the Seine from the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Sitting directly in front of me was an older woman, but not by too much; probably 5 or 6 months pregnant, she spoke alternately in accent-free English and fluent French to a friend across the aisle. She talked about how she had just started a new relationship earlier this year, and after a lifetime of proving herself and creating a successful career she had finally reached a place where she was ready to settle and commit and start her family. She met her boyfriend, they immediately hit it off, moved in together after a month, agreed that they wanted children, and within weeks, were pregnant with a boy. She was clearly deliriously happy about all of this, and spoke with a kind of unforced animation that showed that it was not an act.
When Dave Eggers took the podium, I was struck by how much older he appeared. To me, he has always been his character in AHWOSG, indulgent yet self-aware, ambitious yet self-flaying, attention-seeking and promiscuous but craving stability, eternally 20–something and whirling and precious and verbose, irreverent and ironic and sincere, all at once. In short, the idol of my early 20s. The man who spoke this evening was in his late thirties, happily married with two children, very active in secondary education, a writer whose works are increasingly focused on the world outside vs. the world within, a social activist and homemaker whose most recent project was building a masonry wall in his back yard.
I was blown away.
He was very keen to talk about his newer works, books about social issues like Darfur and the aftermath of Katrina, and whenever anybody asked him about his earlier writing he would wince a little, dodge a bit, and then answer in a way which let you know that while he understood why he needed to write a certain way at that time, he was far more interested in other things now, things beyond himself and his own little life. He mentioned his children frequently, his wife sat next to him on the stage, and he talked much more about social issues and empowering kids to write than making jokes or indulging in irony.
While waiting to get some books signed, I stood between the happily pregnant woman and two pretty college girls from Mississippi. The redhead with a boy’s name had lavender-painted fingernails and a cute pair of glasses haphazardly clipped to a loose scarf, while her friend in the black sweater fiddled with her cell phone while we made small talk: college football, the joys of studying abroad, where we were staying in the city, how we found out about the talk, how great it must be to work at a museum, their strong Southern accents. I kept tuning out, though, listening to the older woman and her friend talk about their lives, how content she was to have happiness piled upon happiness in such short order, to so easily conceive after deferring for so long, to be the first amongst her late 30-something friends to have her relationship and family ambitions realized so unexpectedly.
I kept flipping back and forth between the career women and the college girls, imagining one group as the other, what they must have been like in their twenties, what they would be like 15 years from now, and implicitly wondered where I, halfway between their lives, am supposed to be now that I just had my paradigm rocked. To my relief, though, it didn’t escape my notice that despite the pregnancy and the happy relationship and the years of dedication to her ambitions and her high level of worldly success, the pregnant woman had decided to complete her impeccable, poised outfit with a pair of grey Converse All-Stars.
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