Talk:Dave Eggers

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[Older material][edit]

Should add info about his monthly article for Spin and his serialized novel for Salon.com. I believe Eggers worked at Salon before AHWOSG was published. --Brooks 05:29, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Wasn't he nominated for a Pulitzer but didn't win?

===>Yes. For A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. This says so. And the Internet is never wrong. Justin (koavf) July 2, 2005 05:07 (UTC)

I believe he was born in March and not January. Someone should double check that.

Sister's suicide[edit]

Please remove the part "She later recanted her claims in a posting on her brother's own website McSweeney's Internet Tendency, referring to the incident as "a really terrible LaToya Jackson moment".[5] Beth Eggers committed suicide in November 2001.[6] Eggers briefly spoke about his sister's death during a 2002 fan interview for McSweeney's." This is not relevant and Eggers does not want this up on his own profile page — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.218.202.13 (talk) 00:26, 11 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]


Did that really happen? It looks suspicious to me, like stealth vandalism. Babajobu 22:22, 5 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

-Agreed, I've removed it for now. --Oldy 22:46, 12 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

-It did happen, and I've cited a reputable source. Please keep it in. Pagana 13:45, 15 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a quote from Eggars himself about it, http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/interview/readers_de.html: "A lot of people, total strangers, wrote extremely kind notes after my sister died last year, and that meant a lot to us. It was such a hard year. There are times when my brothers and I just look around and can't believe there's only three of us left."

I removed it. Is there a source for it? It needs a reliable inline source, and it shouldn't refer to "reports", it should refer to her suicide. Please re-add it if verification is found. Twinxor t 07:44, 26 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Uhh. Yeah. No reliable source for this information. Maybe one of you Wiki hot-shots could do your job and delete any and all references to a suicide by Beth. I mean, only because information should be verifiable. Chrmlssmn (talk) 07:13, 16 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No direct link to the coroner's reports. But maybe we can use this? http://articles.latimes.com/2002/oct/20/entertainment/ca-hubler20?pg=3 Chrmlssmn (talk) 07:26, 16 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Fiction or non-?[edit]

In one section of the article his first book "Heartbreaking" is listed as a memoir with fictional elements; in another section it's listed as a nonfiction book. Which is correct?

Both. Seriously. Memoirs are generally regarded as non-fiction, but memoir, as a genre, is distinct from autobiography. The latter is, or is presumed to be, purely factual. In a memoir, however, the writer nearly always makes use of some poetic license in describing events--changing timelines, dialogue, etc. etc. The result is accurately described by the title of the appendix Eggers added to the paperback version of AHWOSG: "Mistakes We Knew We Were Making".--ShelfSkewed 05:05, 14 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Huh? A memoir is, or purports to be, a true recollection of events in the author's life. The only difference from 'autobiography' is that the latter is, or purports to be, comprehensive, whereas a memoir may cover certain selected events or relationships. A work purporting to be a memoir may of course contain distorted or fictional elements, but so may an autobiography, in which case they are not what they purport to be. And a work of pure fiction may be written in the form of a memoir or autobiography (e.g. Nabokov's 'Lolita' - at least, we hope it is pure fiction!).109.158.242.74 (talk) 10:28, 15 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What is the What?[edit]

If you are going to list Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius as nonfiction, then you have to also list What is the What as nonfiction. It's a biography of the man. Although there may also be "fictional" aspects of it, I believe it should be listed as non-fiction. I gazed at Valentino Achak Deng with my own two eyes. He's a real person and this is his story. I know that semantically, this would be considered fiction since it's a novel but I seem to remember a little man named Truman Capote defining the art of the non-fiction novel. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Sclemmo2 (talk • contribs) 02:42, 10 February 2007 (UTC).[reply]

You might find the first few paragraphs of this article interesting: "Different worlds: The many lives -- novelist, social activist, literary innovator, teacher -- of Dave Eggers" by Susan Larson from The Times-Picayune [New Orleans], February 06, 2007. In the article, Eggers discusses the impossibility of crafting a believable factual narrative with so few provable details to work with—"[Deng's] memory had so many holes in it"—and how he felt "liberated" when he allowed himself to treat the story as a novel.
By contrast, Capote, in writing In Cold Blood, had access to all the things Eggers did not—facts, dates, details—and so could (and of necessity had to) hew closely to them. Capote may have called his book a novel, but it isn't. What it is is a superbly well written true-crime book --ShelfSkewed [Talk] 03:59, 23 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
In his interview with Michael Silverblatt [1], Eggers describes how he "fictionalizes" Deng's life story. Anyways, it is awkward to consider a book called "The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng" written by someone other than that person a work of non-fiction. -- User:RWest 11:21 9 August 2007

Broken link[edit]

The link for reference #8 is broken. I don't know how to edit the reference part of the page, but someone should add this, the correct link: [2] Realbrvhrt 20:29, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Done. --ShelfSkewed Talk 22:15, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Uhh. Yeah. Both links mentioned above are broken/outdated. The best bet would be to remove any reference to a suicide. Or, more directly, remove any links that supposedly support said information. Oh geez, information should be, what's the word, verified? Yeah, that's it. Funny how information works like that, needs to be true and whatnot. How inconvenient. Chrmlssmn (talk) 07:18, 16 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No direct link to the coroner's reports. But maybe we can use this? http://articles.latimes.com/2002/oct/20/entertainment/ca-hubler20?pg=3 Chrmlssmn (talk) 07:26, 16 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

L[i]fe[edit]

The Life section needs rewritten. It makes an assumption that people have read AHWOSG and know his life story already, and serves only to provide a couple of random anecdotes of his life, rather than fleshing it out the way an encyclopedia should. Sleepsong (talk) 19:12, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree - the section itself is rambling and awkward, and isn't, as sleepsong implies, an interesting or reasonable narrative.
I can help w/this but not immediately, and probably not in any great depth. And actually probably not anything remotely related to "immediately." However, I do agree about a better bio blurb being a good idea. (It's possible that people are scared to do this for various reasons, but I might be wrong. People might just be lazy, or bogged down with their foreign-diplomat duties in Austria.) Sugarbat (talk) 00:17, 15 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Death[edit]

Added basic information on his death, with reference. Hope that it will be expanded as information becomes available. 173.76.204.216 (talk) 08:51, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

That story is about 'David Eddings' not 'Dave Eggers'. Please don't add nonsense to Wikipedia. Nick-D (talk) 08:55, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Birthplace[edit]

Hey!

German Wikipedia says David Eggers was born in Chicago and you can find different birthplaces and birthdates on the internet (for example 1971 in Lake Forest). Can anyone of you find a reliable source for his true birthplace and date of birth? Thanks in advance! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.16.38.196 (talk) 21:21, 13 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

He grew up in Lake Forest, a suburb of Chicago, but was born in Boston, a fact available from multiple reliable sources that aren't likely to be copying from this article: the speakers' agency that represents him, the National Book Foundation, The Independent.--ShelfSkewed Talk 21:59, 13 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, thank you. This needs to be corrected in the german article.

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