I Am True Of Heart

Like dieting and voting, voicing an opinion about Dave Eggers is an activity as irresistible as it is useless. He has long ago left behind the lowly and humble role of a writer who needs to prove his chops to the reading public: He's now an empire, a brand, a maker and destroyer of careers, an enfant terrible who's taken a kingdom and rules it in his own reformist way, to the extreme nervousness of his advisors. The reviews of Mr. Eggers' most recent book of stories, How We Are Hungry, were remarkable for the wriggling spinelessness of his reviewers. "There's plenty in this collection to remind us that, for all his noodling around, Eggers is phenomenally talented," prodded Jeff Turrentine of the Washington Post. In the New York Times, A.O. Scott fairly pleaded, "When he dispenses with tongue-in-cheekiness and cute experimentalism, his prose is supple, transparent, and surprising."

Phenomenal talent, supple prose-exactly the same attributes of Mr. Eggers' first book, compromised in exactly the same way by meaningless gimmickry. This critical wheedling is like the weak parent trying, as a very last resort, to shame the prodigal son from prideful ways. I unconditionally guarantee that Eggers' next book will be panned on all fronts.

This is because, of course, he's not going to change his ways in the slightest. Mr. Eggers built his empire from tongue-in-cheekiness, and although he makes the rare foray into the province of serious writing (like the president and other front men, Eggers becomes palpably jittery when he has to "talk serious"), no emperor is going to suddenly announce that he hasn't been wearing any clothing. The abstract goal of artistic merit has never been much of a match for the immediate power that comes from business success.

Since it's become evident that Mr. Eggers' own writing is of secondary importance to his work as a promoter-the crazy-haired Don King of literature-the Best American Nonrequired Reading Series, which he edits annually, is the best chance to see what effect he's had on the things that we read.

This year's is a mixed bag-the predetermined fate of almost all Best American Series books-but what's interesting is that the finest pieces are works of journalism. Tish Durkin's "Heavy Metal Mercenary" and Jeff Gordiner's "The Lost Boys" are exemplary pieces of writing and human interest reportage. The first follows a terrifying day in the life of a privately employed arms-runner in a "for-profit militia" in Iraq, one of many people contracted out to do work that the occupation forces can't handle alone. Gordiner's piece is about the young men exiled from the polygamist conclaves in Utah and Arizona so that the elders of those towns can take more wives. Both are intelligent, succinct, and memorable for their ability to reveal thoroughly unaccustomed experiences. The inexhaustible William T. Vollmann contributes a longer but no less absorbing work called "They Came Out Like Ants!" about the alleged community of Chinese immigrants who live in tunnels underneath Mexicali. Skipping the tossed-off self-promotion of Al Franken's entry, the novelty of the nonfiction takes the day.

What's wrong with the short stories? In a word, sameness. The young first-person narrators of these stories all sound as though they shared the same table in the cafeteria of some middle-class American high school (even when the narrator is supposed to be from Spain, as in Jessica Anthony's story about a female bullfighter). And at the head of this table sat the narrator of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius.

One of the self-coined epigrams of that book was, "I am tired. I am true of heart!" and as a slogan it fits most of the main characters of the stories here. They have good hearts. But other people-parents, politicians, rich people, but mostly parents-are less good. The world is screwed up, so they are troubled and do bad things even though, having good hearts, they don't want to. Frequently, due to the goodness of their hearts and the badness of the world, they are rendered incapable of doing anything at all except brood, smoke pot, act quirky, and think with secret longing of unrealizable futures. In this anthology, even the selected stories by the great George Saunders and the elegant Jhumpa Lahiri click like Lego pieces upon the mold.

Needless to say, all the mewling self-pity gets tiresome quickly. The stories are additionally exposed in their weaknesses by the one exceptional work of fiction included, the searingly strong "A Lynching in Stereoscope," by Stephanie Dickinson. Told in overlapping narratives, this ferociously-written account of the during and after of a Deep South lynching is far too invested in plumbing the emotions of the characters to be diluted by self-conscious "noodling around." One looks with real anticipation for more of Dickinson's work.

But there's also much to anticipate from the young people of a tutoring program called 826 Valencia, who helped Eggers edit this book. These talented kids actually do share a lunch table. Write down their names now because here they are-the dauphins! The heirs apparent! How long do you give it before their own stories about good but disaffected young Americans begin to be chosen for the Nonrequired Reading Series?