Last night Dave Eggers, erstwhile writer of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and the founder of the literary magazine McSweeney’s, came to the Cleveland Public Library to talk about art — as well as the soul-killing experience of being a writer in New York, including his short-lived job at Esquire.
“You had to go in every day, even if you didn’t need to,” he said, apparently alarmed by this basic concept of employment. “You also had to look stylish, and I’m not,” he added, also alarmed by another basic concept of working for a magazine loaded up with really stinky perfume ads. “This is my one jacket – and I’ve had it for 14 years.”
Among other complaints, Eggers griped for five minutes about the ridiculous paperwork processes at the big magazines. “To even mail a letter, you needed to fill out an expense form, just so you could get a stamp.”
It was no surprise, then, when the Midwestern boy decided to hightail it out of the city after less than a year. “I never even finished one story while I was there. I got so paralyzed as to what would happen to it” — the endless rewrites, the merciless edits, the beautiful, innocent sentences mercilessly killed on the copy-editing floor. “It’s like you give birth to this child and he’s whisked away from you and the next thing you know he’s dressed in lederhosen.” — Rebecca Meiser
This article appears in Dec 12-18, 2007.
Eggers complaints are all too common. Many writers think their job is not a part of a business and don’t want to “conform” to a workplace. Luckily, I work from home and don’t deal with expense reports for stamps anymore. Good post!
Rebecca, I don’t think you know what the word “erstwhile” means. If you want to pitch yourself as some sort of sneering Dorothy Parker sophisticate you might want to get things like this right.
I didn’t pick up on the misuse of “erstwhile”. I guess that coupled with my not being dick-knob enough to fit in is why I didn’t get hired for the copy-editor job at Scene.
However, as long as you pointed out the careless misuse of “erstwhile”, I’m going to pile on and point out that I was at Dave’s appearance and he said his shoes were 14 years old, not his sport jacket as was misreported.
Thanks for confirming everything I already disliked about Eggers. I will never understand why he has such a big following. There are plenty of PoMo writers who do what he does so much better.
I’m a full-time writer in the corporate world who has also somehow miraculously found time to write short stories and get them published. It’s possible when you stop playing the role of suffering artist.