John Freeman

It's 1pm on a hand-chappingly cold day at the Brooklyn Superhero Supply store in New York and Dave Eggers has things to do. After concluding a meeting with the board members of his latest venture, a tutoring center called 826 NYC, the 34-year-old writer, book publisher and founding editor of the literary journal McSweeney's collapses into a ratty old sofa. He starts to lean back and then visibly resists the respite. He cannot relax just yet.

After this interview Eggers is off to a meeting in midtown Manhattan at 2:30. Then come more appointments and the following day a long drive to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where he will fundraise for Word Street, a tutoring center inspired by 826. His black travel bag sits at my feet like a dog begging to go for a walk. "I'm trying to cut down on travel," Eggers says, when I ask him how he finds time to write. "But with things like this, I really don't want to say no."

As if his debut novel did not make it clear enough, velocity is a key component to being Dave Eggers. In just ten years, the tall, curly-haired writer has gone from being a marginal editor of a little-know spoof magazine (Might) to America's most unpredictable literary star, like Mark Twain, Monty Python and George Plimpton wrapped into one.

And for all the press his unconventional live readings garnered--one of which involved Eggers quietly cutting hair--the real engine driving this rise was not a Warholian understanding of celebrity, but talent.

"A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" built a moat of irony around the loss of his two parents to cancer in the space of three months, sealing out the memoir's sanctities in the process. Quick on its heels was his inventive first novel, "You Shall Know Our Velocity," which told the story of two high-school chums who race around the globe trying to give away money only to discovery how arbitrary their generosity is. Last fall there was a collection of short stories.

Add to that a few anthologies geared at reinvigorating the short story, a new journal, The Believer, aimed at bringing what Eggers describes as "a level of respect" back into book reviewing, a book on giraffes, the expansion of McSweeney's into book publishing, and two storefronts that sell, respectively, pirate supplies and (like this one) superhero gear, and it becomes clear that Eggers has grand, if quirky ambitions.

But his grandest ambition is just beginning to become apparent. As we talk about his recent book of short stories, "How We Are Hungry," I realize that Eggers doesn't just want to make people laugh and entertain. He wants to push readers beyond their comfort zones culturally and stylistically. And he wants them to become activists, too.

For the past five years it's a desire he's been leading by example. Back in San Francisco he teaches two free writing classes a week at 826 Valencia, the mothership of his writing labs. One is about writing, the other is called "The Best American Nonrequired Reading," which ultimately results in an anthology published by Houghton Mifflin in America. As Eggers says it "starts out as a reading class where [students] are reading everything in the U.S. they can get their hands on, then it sort of morphs into everything--counseling, creative writing. And it goes on for about eight months."

Thanks to Eggers' profile, the kinds of students who are showing up at 826 Valencia and 826 NYC has changed slightly. Parents are becoming clued in to the caliber of talent teaching for free down the block. Daniel Handler, the brain behind Lemony Snicket, is active in the programs, as is Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Chabon, who recently taught a horror class.

"Great story," Eggers says excitedly. "[Michael Chabon] was talking to Stephen King, he said, hey, `I'm going to teach a writing class. I'm going to be teaching your work.' King said, `If you teach that, I'll fly out.' And he did it. He flew out all the way from Maine to teach a two-hour class to thirty students."

What's so fascinating about Eggers as a public figure is that he has found a way to take an existing concern about how to give back to the world and made it both his life's passion and his artistic obsession. Getting people to join in the campaign seems almost easy for him. The tutoring center we're sitting in reaches 500 students. His San Francisco center offered 7,000 workshop sessions last semester alone. Together, they draw from a pool of some 800 volunteers. A new chapter was launched recently in Los Angeles and more are on the way in Chicago, Seattle and Ann Arbor. The numbers might sound small now but you can be sure they're going to grow. Whereas once his book tours were Dadaist art shows, now they are fundraisers.

Although some press of Eggers in the beginning did not suggest someone well suited to working in the public eye, any roughness around the edges is gone now. Over the course of an hour and a half, Eggers is friendly and cheerful, coming back time and again to his 826 projects, always deflecting credit to cohorts, such as Nineve Calegari, a friend and longtime school teacher with whom he started the tutoring enterprise.

Together with Daniel Mouthrop, whom Eggers is quick to note did "the lion's share of the work," the three of them have written a book about teacher pay coming this month called "Teachers Have It Easy." The book uses teachers' first-person narratives to make a compelling case for why the only way American public schools will get better is through a huge increase in salary.

Although there has been so much written on teaching and why it doesn't work, Eggers and his co-writers managed to drum up new stories and statistics. As they discover in their research, being a teacher is no summer vacation. In fact, some 42 percent of teachers work summer school or a non-teaching job over the summer to make ends meet. This leads to long days for people like Erik Benner, who arrives at Cross Timbers Middle School at 6 in the morning to open up the gym for morning football practice, then ends his day close to 10pm at night, finishing his second job at Circuit City.

Teaching is something that has been in Eggers' blood since he was a child, and he is especially sensitive to their plight. "My mom and sister and I were teachers, and one my best friends who was on our board in San Francisco, named Casey Fuller, was a teacher in San Francisco. I'd known her since I was 12 and I just remember she got her certificate and her masters. She was teaching first grade and then later on in high school. She was the most motivated and inspired and happy person I'd ever met in any field."

But as is often the case, Eggers' friend simply couldn't make the finances of her passion work. "As the years went by--she taught for five years--it became harder and harder to make ends meet. She was living with a roommate and she couldn't even live on her own unless she got married."

Until leadership at the top catches up with the problem, Eggers says, America's most talented graduates will continue to think twice before they teach. Seventy-eight percent of college graduates polled in one survey in 2000 said being "seriously underpaid" was a major deterrent to considering the field.

Which is why Eggers and his co-writers are turning Reaganomics on its head to argue for higher salaries for teachers. "It's our theory that everything trickles down from there," says Eggers. "That if you have high salaries, good conditions, you have good support, you have a lot of communication between teachers, you pay for teachers' supplemental training, and the students learn."

This narrative-based approach is an appropriate model for the book--teachers are, after all, somewhat invisible in America--but it's also an appropriate metaphor for Dave Eggers' own story. He suffered a great loss, and though narrative could not bring his parents back, it gave him a container for his grief. The power of story also got him out of Brooklyn and back to California, where he is happier, and now lives with his wife, the novelist Vendela Vida.

The power of story brought McSweeney's out of the margins and into the mainstream. Story also brought him the power to publish himself and writers he believes in. And now the story of teachers' plight is going to power Dave Eggers' message out into the world--to get people to give something back. Believe me, you will know his velocity.

(2005-06-28)

Also by John Freeman

What I'm reading this summer
``I am rereading Thomas Mann's `The Magic Mountain.' I am fascinated by the way Mann interlinks...
(2005-06-09)

Nonfiction Review
The only thing Americans love more than a scoundrel is a reformed one
(2005-05-31)

Family Guy
American humorists often make a Faustian bargain with their personal lives
(2005-05-31)

Nonfiction Review
On April 26, 1986, an explosion in Chernobyl caused the worst nuclear accident in history. Although only thirty-one people died, thanks to the Soviet Union's policy of secrecy we will never know the true cost. Unknown thousands were born with birth defects, and many more from the tiny country of Belarus remain haunted by memories of that day. Svetlana Alexievich's "Voices from Chernobyl" is the first book to chronicle their stories
(2005-05-10)

Versatility
(2005-05-10)

Fiction Review
(2005-04-26)

Fiction Review
(2005-04-12)

Fiction Review
(2005-03-08)

Nonfiction Review
(2005-02-22)

Fiction Review
(2005-02-08)

Nonfiction Review
(2004-12-21)

Poetry Review
(2004-12-07)

about Newcitychicago | about Newcity magazine | advertising | privacy policy | FAQ | employment