I never really liked Dave
Eggers. His persona always struck me of the worst kind of intellectual
behavior: self-centered and unoriginal. So it was a great surprise to me when
he seemed to have changed over the past couple of years. He is no longer someone
I feel ruins the idea of what a smart person should be and act like, and now, I
actually value his opinion on new books, because I now believe that it comes
from a place of love and not simply validation. He has taken the place of
Jonathan Franzen, as America’s preeminent literary guru (while, as evidenced by
recent interviews with him, Franzen has taken the place of America’s literary
blowhard). This new feeling of mine was cemented when I finished Egger’s novel
from last year, A Hologram for the King, for it is unlike anything that I would
come to expect from him. The book is very straightforward, minus the lack of
quotations, and tells a very simple yet profound story about a man’s journey to
redemption against some painfully impossible odds. It is a story that has been
done before, most notably in Death of a Salesman and Waiting for Godot, which
this book combines the themes off. But it does so in a way that injects a lot
of heart into the proceedings, and puts the sense of urgency and grandiosity in
terms that almost anyone can understand. Through Alan Clay, Eggers creates a
hero’s trial of a modern man stuck in a tortuously complex place. That place is
in the middle of the desert in Saudi Arabia, where Alan, with the help of a few
eager 20-something employees, convince the king of the Saudi Arabia, Abdullah,
to let his company finance the construction of a mega-city in the desert. But
repeated attempts to contact the king to get a one-on-one meeting, using a
hologram machine, are thwarted by agonizingly silly circumstances. The two
plays mentioned above really are at the heart of the novel: the wait for the
king in the hot desert feels a lot like the wait for Godot on a lonely stretch
of road, and the hole that Alan has dug for himself financially conveys the
same feeling that Willy Loman’s last heartbreaking days had. Another treat that
this book offers is the weird minutia that exists with Alan’s past life and
present one. His friend, Charlie, killed himself by walking out into a lake
near Alan’s in the winter and freezing to death, which is making the property
that much harder to sell and get money to pay for his daughters Ivy League
tuition, his main reason for going out to the desert. Also, between becoming
addicted to Arabian moonshine and nursing a weird growth on the back of his
neck, he meets a wide variety of strange people, like a cab driver who likes his
corny jokes, and a doctor who awakens his need to feel alive in the face of
adversity. This book is filled with little treats and a quick, inevitable ending
that shows that life may go on if you want it to. I enjoyed this book very much,
and I’m glad we have someone like Dave Eggers, which is something I never
thought I would say.
Rating: 5/5
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