An Even Later Blog Post: Eggers' Tone

                Let’s look at these two passages in the book:  the ending, from maybe midway down page 435 to the final page 437, and then the magazine excerpt on page 174.  These two passages are redolent of many passages in the book involving multiple tones. 

            The ending of the book demonstrates Eggers’ extremely quick, vulgar accelerating anger.  As it happens in many parts of the book, he starts out describing a mundane activity with pretty specific detail and builds into a steam-rolling, almost sexual build-up laced with no short amount of fuck’s or goddamn’s.  Here he discusses the weather, especially the wind on Black Sands beach as he and Toph play Frisbee as they often do.  This quickly dives into a deep, self-involved (perhaps cannibalistic, to use John’s term) indictment of us.  It is quick, gory poetic prose releasing his immense emotion about his situation and how he had to grow so quickly: “I’ve been so old for so long, for you.”  It culminates into his request that we do “it” right through him, seeming to request pleasure either sexually or morbidly; a mixture of the two perhaps. 

            The second passage is indicative of all the MIGHT magazine excerpts and passages that Eggers gives us.  It is a sarcastic drop amidst a puddle of anguish and insecurity.  The pages he gives us about the magazine show his societal dreams, but surrounding these pages we still see his personal life which often belies this.  In “his” (he never says they are just his writing, but he is the one who includes them in his book) magazine excerpts, he has an overly sarcastic tone, sometimes unfairly biting (see page 284-85).  They sound cocksure, whereas Eggers lets us see his very unsure handling of his own life.  He even admits to the magazine’s faults in this regard when he projects his self-critical half onto other characters conversation such as Toph and “his” scolding of Eggers for the Adam Rich hoax (pages 316-319).