A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

by Dave Eggers

Do you have children? Do you have friends who have children? If you do, you may have heard of the axiom that all babies love to stare at other babies. You may have seen this in action in your local coffee shop or supermarket - two parents will stroll by in opposite directions, pushing babies in their sporty new "dad" strollers, and the babies will invariable goggle at each other, straining their necks around, reaching out their pudgy hands to each other.

Not tiny babies, of course. Medium-sized and up, I'm talking about.

Well, having heard of this phenomenon, and seen it for myself as described above, and thought about it for a while, I have come to the conclusion that it doesn't stop with babies. I mean, I'm sure I'm not the only person on the subway (aah, the subway) who would give six bucks and her left nut to stare and stare at the person across from her, drinking in every detail, their face, their clothes, their hair, their shoes - particularly their shoes - I'd like to know what they're reading, what they're saying to the person next to them, if I could I'd like the chance to hear what they were thinking. Of course it's impossible, because by about Grade One most people decide that they don't like being stared at, don't like the evaluation implied in someone else's gaze, don't want to be inspected that way, without the privilege of deciding what the other person will see. So staring becomes impolite, grounds for high dudgeon. But wouldn't you love to, if you could?

So instead of staring at the people on the subway, we have popular culture. We get television, movies, magazines - even just the covers of magazines - I was once walking past a magazine store with this sort of scary schizophrenic crackhead panhandler who had taken a liking to me, and he pointed at the window as we walked past, at the rows and rows of magazines on display, the rows of faces, all looking out and smiling right at us, and said, "What do you think all those women are looking at? Look at all the women! Why do you think they put them there? For me?" And of course, in a way they were for him, or for anybody who wanted to look, to look and look, to buy them and take them home and keep them in their bathrooms so they could sit in there alone and lock the door and stare to their hearts' content...

That's why we have celebrities - all these actors, these models, mayors, athletes - they are people who are professionally looked at. We pay them so well because most people won't do it for free. Of course, the downside to having professional stared-at people is that they aren't necessarily very much like us - they're too pretty, too pampered, too accomplished, too rich - when what we really want is to know about that short lady in front of us in line at the grocery store, about her divorce, about the secret hidden thoughts of that old man in the window of the Iranian coffee house on the corner, even sort of about the manicure habits of the girl in the bakery across from where I used to work - she obviously had strong feelings about her nails, but I could never get clear on what exactly they were...

And of course, in theory anyway, we could find all of this stuff out by befriending these people, getting to know them, sitting patiently and listening to their stories- but then they'd be looking at us, too, there'd have to be some sort of give-and-take, the inevitable politics and complications, obligations and flat spots of real friendship, the process of finding out about them would be so long, so gradual, so demanding of delicacy and understanding, of personal revelations, of generosity, that it really doesn't seem worth it.

So anyway, what I'm saying is that Dave Eggers has sold a million copies of this book and become rich and famous because he decided to let everybody look at him, free of any obligation, and look and keep looking until they were, to be honest, maybe a little tired of looking at him and knowing all about him, and the people are now maybe a little irritated at the self-indulgence of the whole exercise (let's be honest, it's self-indulgent on both sides, ours as well as his), maybe even a little embarrassed at the deep satisfaction they got from reading it, kind of like the feeling they get from reading "On the Road", ahh that was good, but was it Art? - but they (we) are (I am), nonetheless, grateful.