Writing Styles - Eggers

Dave Eggers's writing is incredibly fluid and easy to read. He writes like he talks, or rather, he writes like he thinks. He uses repetition possibly more than any other writer we've encountered this semester. What I really noticed about his writing, however, was his technique of breaking up stories and scattering them throughout the book, getting back to them after placing another piece in the puzzle. The story I'm thinking of in particular is his father kneeling in the driveway. He tells his sister's story with such clarity it's hard to imagine it isn't seen through his own eyes (I suppose that's the mark of a good writer) but it's interesting how, instead of telling the entire story in one passage, he inserts snippets here and there, and builds the characters of his family (including the house, a character in its own right) before revealing the new developments of Beth's story. This, in my opinion, is smart writing on Eggers part, because he is able to keep the attention of his reader by building the mystery and anticipation.

His humor is an incredible agent to his writing as well. It's funny because it's about real things, like his wallpaper or his mother's bile. He could have taken on a number of other emotions and tones (depression, annoyance, humiliation, anger) but chooses to go with comedic appreciation, which I think was very wise. It makes it much easier to read and also much easier to relate to. The passage where he goes on about all the ways he would murder the people who knew about his mother's illness and pitied his family was funny because most people know what it's like to be in that situation; to be gossip fodder for the town or community in which you live, and wanting nothing more than for it to all go away. He takes it one step further by actually explaining (in sometimes grotesque detail, I might add) the ways he'd like them to die. There's really no reason for his hostility, but it's understandable just the same.

Eggers is able to reign in his audience with his use of comedy, fluidity, normalcy, and anticipation. You know the path his parents are heading down, but you have to know how and when it ends anyway. His writing is so easily relatable, and yet the way he tells his story makes it unlike any other I've read.

Similar writing style: iamgettingfat.blogspot.com (uses humor to tell strange and mundane trials and tribulations of everyday life)