Your Fathers, Where Are They?

Dave Eggers
Your Fathers, Where Are They?

Knopf/McSweeney’s, 2014

The novel is written entirely in the form of dialogue and generally not very different from the play. A young troubled man named Thomas (he is slightly over 30) kidnaps an astronaut named Kevin, whom they once were in college together with. Kevin, of course, does not remember his kidnapper, but Thomas knows who Kevin is. Thomas brings the kidnapped astronaut on abandoned military base in California near the ocean and there he handcuffes Kevin to a pole. The kidnapper only wants to talk with former classmate, to get answers to his questions and promises Kevin to release him soon. The astronaut first swears, threatens, but quickly realizes that the threats are useless. He is completely at the mercy of his captor.

Thanks to leading questions, Kevin starts to remember Thomas vaguely. Back in college, Kevin has set a goal of becoming an astronaut and achieved his goal in a few years. Thomas always liked Kevin, saw him as his role model, the only man that can keep his word. Kevin played baseball for the college team, studied at 4.0, graduated from the NASA Academy, learned Urdu, was a fighter pilot, then became an astronaut, flew into space and planned to get on the Shuttle, when the government canceled the U.S. space program. Kevin is only the first in a chain of people abducted by Thomas.

Eggers always loved experimenting with the form. No less he was keen on politics: in his latest works there are increasing degrees of actuality. In Your Fathers, Where Are They? politics and prose enter into symbiosis, and the result is not the most impressive. For political expression the book is too one-sided and superficial, for the novel tiresome and predictable.

In his novel, Eggers addresses several topics of the day: useless wars, police brutality, budget cuts, pedophilia (along with pederasty, if you use Egger’s choice of words), inadequate parenting etc. The author seemed to be in a hurry and jumps on these topics as valiant steed, only engaging in a dialogue on one issue, as abruptly switches to another. Pressed (no other word for it) into the book are many different themes, only they are revealed too superficially. Eggers seems to be not a stupid man, and he does not know politics at all. He seemed to be grabbed an idea here and there, built his views and now passes them through his characters’s lips. Meaning of the dialogue is an exchange of views, which could change the point of view of another person. It is sad that no one in the novel has not changed his views. Thomas initially is frozen in his views on the world, and no strangers will not change him, and abducted people are less interested in what his kidnapper thinks. What a worldview, when you're chained to a pole. Thomas originally planned to find answers to the right questions, for this he has planned the kidnappings. But after the first quarter of the book, he loses interest in other people's answers, having to read lectures and blaming others for all the sorrows. Thus Eggers fails his original task. And if the main character already knows all the answers and will not change his point of view, then why bother with kidnapping of so many people? Thomas could easily tell his monologue, sitting in the kitchen.

Your Fathers, Where Are They? as a novel are too tedious reading. It’s starting intriguing (somebody steals an astronaut - it's just cool by any standards), and what follows diminishes the intrigue with each page. The reason lays in the main character, who, though an ill person, still pretty bad person. Nothing pleasant in listening to his self-righteous speeches, it's like to find yourself in an elevator with a stranger not happy with his life - the first two floors you sympathize with him, and you want to leave by the third.

After the first third, when it becomes clear that the main reason why Thomas committed the kidnappings, it becomes too boring. Eggers writes briskly, but the dialogue is still deprived of any spark. Perhaps the author did not have enough humor and self-irony. The story of the abduction to the finale becomes a grotesque parody, and the plot seemed to be written by some horror fan with a sick imagination, writing fanfic for some forum.

It's a shame that Eggers spent his talent on this one-sided, uninteresting novel. Fathers, where were you when you gave Dave the opportunity to publish this thing?

A Hologram for the King

Dave Eggers
A Hologram for the King

McSweeney's, 2012

54-year-old Alan Clay arrives in Jeddah of Saudi Arabia as the leader of a group of three people - representatives of the IT-company, whose mission is to show holographic presentation to the King Abdullah. For Alan, this project is the final straw, the chance to get out of life’s crisis. He owes a large sum of money to friends and partners, he’s been unemployed, he can not even sell his house to pay debts and college tuition for his daughter Kit. He has long been divorced from his wife, Ruby, who was smarter than him and wanted to change the world. Alan his whole lige has been involved in the production. He started at a young age in his home state to make a brand’s bicycles. His business was going up the hill, expanded, until it was times like these that bicycles (and everything else in the world) has become much cheaper to produce in China. Alan had to close his business, he had nothing to sell.

In Saudi Arabia, the company which represents Alan and his team has a goal to sell the latest IT-equipment for the King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC). Meanwhile, the site of a developing place is a huge desert, with a business center and a number of service buildings on it.

On the first day Alan misses the shuttle, which takes the group from the hotel to the site, Alan can hardly call a taxi. Talkative taxi driver turns out to be an Arab named Yousef, who had studied for some time in the States, and is now taking business courses in SA. Before getting into a taxi, Yousef examines a car: the husband of one of Yousef’s former girlfriends suspects that she is cheating on him with Yousef, and the taxi driver fears that the jealous husband could kill him. Arrived at the place Alan is a bit stunned by what he has seen: his group is not placed in the building, but in the tent. Young employees, including one man and two women, complain that inside the tent the Internet connection doesn’t work: there is no cable connection, and Wi-Fi is very weak. Nothing has instructed the group. Alan and his team for a long time will be waiting for the arrival of the King.
If you do not know what to write a book about, simply put a protagonist in a hotel room in another country, and the story will tell itself. That’s a piece of advice to young writers. Eggers is far from a newcomer, but he did not disdain to use this scheme. How many novels have been written about how the middle-aged men, desperate, lost, lonely, are a thousand miles from home in search of answers to vital questions? Hundreds. Does Eggers discover new land? No. Does this mean that his book «A Hologram for the King» is bad? On the contrary. Egger’s novel turned out a strong one: catchy, funny and sad. If previously Eggers was famous for his baroque style, five hundred pages and more novels, this one is an example of conciseness and brevity. The author has thrown everything superfluous out, removed unnecessary fat from the bones of the book, leaving the bare necessities. His prose has nothing hip and hipster now, just man's cold prose, prose that not afraid to point to human wickedness.

Mot so much is going on in the novel, or even next to nothing, just waiting (the epigraph is taken from Beckett), driving between the tent in the desert and the hotel. The novel though is not boring. Pages fly no worse than in any thriller. Eggers fills slow 'now' with the protagonist’s memories of the neighbor’s suicide, the failure of the business, swimming in a river with crocodiles, pulling his wife out of jail. Alan, though his life seems to be falling apart, never wonderes "what if? '. He can not even imagine that once at a certain part of his life he could try to change himself. Move to another activity, find another wife, save money for a rainy day. All of this speaks not only of Alan as incurious, but that he looks forward. He did not intend to surrender, ending the novel points to this too.

This novels is rather comical, the situation itself which Alan and his team are in is causing a smile. After the first half the novel becomes more profound, but more uneven. Journey to the castle with Yousef (a reference to Kafka) reads quite strange, the story sags a bit, the book slips. But the ending redeems all.

What else impresses in «A Hologram for the King», is the fact that this is a story of not just one person, but the whole Western civilization. Eggers tells not just the story of a man whose life is falling apart, but of civilization, which also goes by the wayside. The Western world has become a nation of cats, which are curled up on the couch, not wanting to do anything. The Western world is now producing only holograms and the websites that you can not touch. All the rest is produced in Asia, Africa and Latin America. The Western world has become hostage to the East. Eggers does not predict what will happen to Western civilization, but we see Alan as a victim of the coming changes.

This novel is a lively, full of emotions and feelings, the one that you can touch. It’s a real thing, not a hologram.