Dave Eggers Debates Himself

At the beginning of the 21st century, one book mapped, with uncanny accuracy, where American literature was headed. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, by an upstart writer named Dave Eggers, was powered by a voice that was at once self-deprecating and self-aggrandizing. It was ostensibly a memoir of the period when Eggers raised his little brother, Toph, after their parents’ deaths, but its characters consistently break the fourth wall, and the book frequently doubles back to explain…