"I'm here to see Dave Eggers."

"..."

"What is the What?"

"What?"

And so began my amazing night with Dave Eggers.

Okay, so it wasn't exactly a candlelit dinner (if ONLY), but I did get a front row seat last night when he spoke at NYU's Center for Global Affairs.

He was plugging "What is the What," his last-year's novel about the Lost Boys of Sudan. I knew his velocity. He was heartbreaking, staggering and yes, genius (or penis).

Apparently—you may be surprised—the news from Africa sucks. And we still suck for not doing enough. You may click here for more info.

Foreign Affairs editor Gideon Rose was on hand to interview Eggers and one of the Lost Boys (but not the one featured in the book) named Abraham. Eggers and Abraham were far more eloquent than Rose, who wouldn't shut up about his opinions of Judaism and also was really into rereading passages of Eggers' books when we all knew that Eggers' velvet voice would do it more justice. Rose even read the last paragraph of the book when he knew that nearly half of the audience hadn't finished it. Okay, so that's clearly not as bad as ethnic cleansing, but he's still a dick.

Genocide aside, here are the unsurprising details about Eggers that I could gather:

  • He's a Mac user (hipsterous maximus).
  • His password has 8 or 9 characters (any guesses on what it could be???).
  • He totes a Moleskine, which undoubtedly is packed with pictures of staplers, witty reinventions of dialogue and unintelligible footnotes.
  • He was wearing brown shoes, the heel of the right shoe was held together with what looked like black electrical tape.
  • He had a few gray hairs, but totally in that hot George Clooney way.
  • He fiddled with a Uniball pen for over an hour, but it was ultimately endearing.
  • To write dialogue in his books, he has to have it on tape.
  • He signed books FOREVER and spoke cheerfully with his hordes of oh-so-worldlytrendyinterestingwellread fans. He seemed—!!!—genuinely interested in what they had to say.


I know he's poor, married with a kid, blah blah blah, but he knows where to find me.