Who do you think "wrote" this book, Dave Eggars or Valentino Achak Deng? The story is incredibly moving (few would argue this point) but how do you feel about the book as a book?
i struggled with this from time to time as i read. sometimes i would picture dave eggars sitting at his home with achak, typing away furiously and then being captivated by the story and pausing just to absorb more of his new friend's reality. surely they are friends now, right? how could eggars hear all of this and not befriend achak? it is an immense story to tell. i think collaborating with a professional author was a good choice. one review i read totally trashed eggars' diction, saying "no young man talks like that," but how do we know? how do we know that valentino didnt sit at dave's coffee table and say things just as they are printed on the page?
im rambling. point is, it wasnt the most powerfully written book ive ever read. i was able to put it down for a week. the story is heavy and significant; the style is not my favorite. but i wont trash it. because it is valentino achak deng's story. and im glad he's finally being heard.
Okay...I am going to refrain from responding to this question with a real answer. I just saw on the news today that the holocaust love story was fake and that makes me sad. I will think about it over the night.
I did not have my own opinion on this after thinking about it for the past days. I sold out and looked up what the "critics" said about the book. Lee Siegel, a writer for the New Yorker and others said he "How strange for one man to think that he could write the story of another man, a real living man who is perfectly capable of telling his story himself -- and then call it an autobiography."
I disagree slightly because I really hear Achak's voice through the novel and Achak may be an amazing storyteller in person (the novel talks a lot about his speaking engagements) but maybe that magic does not transfer over in text which is why Eggars is the perfect medium.
3 comments:
i struggled with this from time to time as i read. sometimes i would picture dave eggars sitting at his home with achak, typing away furiously and then being captivated by the story and pausing just to absorb more of his new friend's reality. surely they are friends now, right? how could eggars hear all of this and not befriend achak?
it is an immense story to tell. i think collaborating with a professional author was a good choice. one review i read totally trashed eggars' diction, saying "no young man talks like that," but how do we know? how do we know that valentino didnt sit at dave's coffee table and say things just as they are printed on the page?
im rambling. point is, it wasnt the most powerfully written book ive ever read. i was able to put it down for a week. the story is heavy and significant; the style is not my favorite. but i wont trash it. because it is valentino achak deng's story. and im glad he's finally being heard.
Okay...I am going to refrain from responding to this question with a real answer. I just saw on the news today that the holocaust love story was fake and that makes me sad. I will think about it over the night.
I did not have my own opinion on this after thinking about it for the past days. I sold out and looked up what the "critics" said about the book. Lee Siegel, a writer for the New Yorker and others said he "How strange for one man to think that he could write the story of another man, a real living man who is perfectly capable of telling his story himself -- and then call it an autobiography."
I disagree slightly because I really hear Achak's voice through the novel and Achak may be an amazing storyteller in person (the novel talks a lot about his speaking engagements) but maybe that magic does not transfer over in text which is why Eggars is the perfect medium.
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