In his NYT review of "A Hologram For The King", the British essayist Pico Iyer noted that "Dave Eggers has developed an exceptional gift for opening up the lives of others so as to offer the story of globalism as it develops and, simultaneously, to unfold a much more archetypal tale of struggle and loneliness and drift.”
I was thrilled to hear yesterday that Dave Eggers was selected as one of the finalists for best fiction by the National Book Award committee for his latest book, "A Hologram For The King". When the title was listed on Amazon for pre-order, I signed on immediately and had it in my hands the day it was released back in June, because I felt it was going to be a very significant piece of writing that needed to be consumed and digested immediately. I was not disappointed in any measure. "Hologram" tells the story of an American businessman forced to literally cool his heels in Saudi Arabia while waiting for an opportunity to make a glitzy hi-tech business presentation to King Abdullah, in the hope that it will reverse the slow decline into failure that his life has become. Personally and professionally, everything's gone belly up, but still he endures and waits for the break that will change everything. He fills his days with futile attempts to navigate through baffling protocol and a lack of wi-fi connectivity, and his nights with illicit alcohol-fueled forays into learning about a culture he's confounded by. Sandwiched in-between are glimpses of how he's come to this time and place in his life. It's an Arabian rendition of "Waiting for Godot", where the stage floor has turned to sand, and Estragon's understudy is a savvy young limo driver named Yousef. By turns tragic and comical, this is the story of a traveller whose compass is as ever-changing as the shifting dunes that surround him.
After the virtuosity of his last book, "Zeitoun", a nonfiction account of a Syrian-American immigrant and his extraordinary experience during Hurricane Katrina, I became a full-time ardent admirer of Eggers' narrative style, and the generosity of his story-telling. The scope and discipline of this craft had been informed and honed by a stunning previous work, "What Is The What", a fictionalized autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng, one of the thousands of Sudanese "Lost Boys" who in the late '80's were forced to flee their country in the face of ever-increasing brutality and deprivation.
In giving a voice to Valentino, Eggers found his true calling as a writer, and hasn't looked back since. He continues to push forward, shining a lamp on injustice, loneliness, alienation, and the over-arching confusion we all feel as we jostle against each other on that singular, previously darkened path. There is Dave, reassuring us that we have a lot more in common with Deng, Zeitoun and Alan Clay, the baffled businessman protagonist of "Hologram", than we ever could have figured out on our own, and that knowledge gives us comfort and strengthens us to prevail, because we are in the end not alone, after reading an Eggers book. My praise might register as a tad hyperbolic in its enthusiasm, but know that it is rooted in the belief that Dave Eggers is one of our most important writers, and for me his work has been transformative. His influence is a big part of why I was able to start writing again.
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