A Hologram For the King

by Dave Eggers

A Hologram for the King marks the first fully fictional book that I've read by Eggers, since What is the What, his brilliant novel about a boy fleeing the war in Sudan, is really non-fiction in its basis, as is Zeitoun, his account of a family's struggles in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.  Both of these books show the strength of people in the most extreme of situations - war, famine, natural disaster, and America's Kafka-esque approach to fighting terrorism.

Hologram is not like that at all.  Its focus is on the decay of America's middle- and working-class, and American industry in general, as well as its diminishment on the world stage.  Alan Clay is an aging salesman who finds himself in late middle age with no idea what has happened to his employment, marital, and social status.  As a young man, he was a hugely successful executive at Schwinn, the bicycle company, before its business evaporated, a victim of its own drive for efficiency and cost-reduction through out-sourcing.  Now Clay is struggling to pay back the debts accrued through his attempts to start his own bicycle business, and to pay for his only daughter's college education.

Clay has been sent to Saudi Arabia to pitch a holographic communication system to the King Abdullah Economic City development, with the hope that Reliant Inc., the company sending him and three assistants, would become the IT provider's for the King's dream city of the future.  This is Alan's last chance at reaching anything approaching success, and he knows it.

The problem is, he and Reliant's team are clearly an afterthought.  They are left to languish for days in the KAEC's presentation tent, and no one has any idea when the King is going to arrive.  Alan succumbs to his own apathy, with the help of a little boot-legged siddiqui, and perhaps a mysterious growth on the back of his neck.

Alan is not the most sympathetic of characters at times; his bewilderment of the loss of privilege he, and by extension, his country, has suffered can be a little annoying, but there are a few very memorable characters filling this book.  The best is Yousuf, who we first meet as Alan's driver when he misses the shuttle bus to KAEC on his first day there.  Yousuf has been educated in the US, is the son of a very successful sandal shop owner, and is utterly and overwhelmingly bored in his country, where there are no opportunities for someone like him.  Much as Alan has become the face of America in this book, Yousuf, and later a female doctor, becomes the face of KSA, underscoring the differences between the two countries.

Eggers is an easy, capable writer.  He captures the present moment remarkably well, and writes Clay from a full cloth.  The other characters are not as well-developed, but that's because we really only see them from Alan's perspective, despite the use of 3rd person narration.  Alan's the American; of course all other characters are peripheral.

McSweeney's 41

Edited by Dave Eggers

It would seem I don't get tired of the type of contemporary fiction and reportage on offer in any given issue of the McSweeney's Quarterly Concern.

Issue 41 starts off strong, with a story by Thomas McGuane about a couple of old friends who have gone off on a fishing trip together.  They have kind of come to hate one another, and their crotchety old guide is a real handful - this is a nice exploration of character in a difficult terrain.

Jess Walter has perhaps the best story in this collection with 'The Wolf and the Wild', a story about a white collar convict who ends up volunteering as part of a program that has cons working in schools with children (because that sounds like such a good idea).  It's sensitive and remarkably well-written.

Deb Olin Unferth tosses some life-long tourists into a difficult situation in 'Stay Where You Are', which showcases how Western arrogance can play out, even among people who have spent decades travelling the globe.

Henry Bean's story 'The Virago' is a fascinating character piece about a Hollywood agent who will do just about anything to keep ahold of her tenuous grasp on her career, clients, and empty attempts at happiness.  It's both scary and sad, and very powerful.

In 'Robot Sex', Ryan Boudinot portrays a future where humans and robots work side-by-side, but where relations between robots are illegal.  It's an unlikely future, but the story is fun.

There is an excerpt from John Brandon's new novel, A Million Heavens, which really makes me want to read this book.

This issue ends with a collection of four pieces of Australian Aboriginal short fiction, and all are excellent.  They tend to explore inter-racial relationships a fair deal.  Tony Birch's 'The Promise' is narrated by an alcoholic who wants to get his wife and kids back, but wants his next drink more.  In 'S&J', by Ellen Van Neerven-Currie, a pair of girlfriends pick up a German hitchhiker who has never met Aborigines before, and is intent on exploring quite a bit of at least one of them.  Tara June Winch wrote 'It's Too Difficult to Explain,' a story about a young Aboriginal man who excelled in sprinting, but found failure in all other things, and eventually that too, as he tried to negotiate a relationship with a white girl from an educated background.  Finally, there is 'Tonsils', a wonderful story by Melissa Lucashenko, narrated by a woman who has taken in her daughter's friend, because the girl's mother is a drunk.  This story has one of the best endings I've read in a while.

In terms of non-fiction, there are two pieces of note.  The first is 'A Land Rush in Tehran', wherein Viveca Mellegard explores her memories and the modern reality of a formerly quiet, empty section of Tehran which is now filled with skyscrapers.

J. Malcolm Garcia, my favourite of McSweeney's regular non-fiction contributors, has written 'What Happens After Sixteen Years in Prison?', which follows two sisters who spent that long imprisoned for a robbery which they probably never committed, and which caused no harm if it did happen.  Garcia doesn't come out and indict the American justice system; he lets the story do it for him.

Each story in this book is illustrated quite beautifully at the beginning, and as with most issues of McSweeney's, this book is a pleasure to hold and open.

McSweeney's 40

Edited by Dave Eggers

The latest edition of McSweeney's (which comes packaged with a book about Rwanda, which I haven't read yet) is book-ended by pieces that examine two separate recent occurrences of mass protest and uprising.  The book opens (after the usual Letters section) with a piece on Occupy Wall Street, and ends with a collection of writings from Egypt's great uprising of 2011.

Saïd Sayrafiezadeh's 'Notes From a Bystander' was as much about his difficult relationship with his father, an old-school Socialist, as it was about the Occupy Movement, and that's what made the piece work.  Sayrafiezadeh is not like the youth who started camping out in Zucotti Park last summer - he was born and raised in the Socialist movement, and has reached a level of exhaustion with political protest, which makes him an interesting commentator for such a singular moment.  It was nice to see the events near Wall Street from such a rare perspective.

From there, this volume moves into a series of short stories.  David Vann gives us an interesting and amusing look at a dysfunctional family in 'All Together Here' while Kevin Moffett tells us a story about two sisters who live in a secluded cabin in the woods, editing and embellishing wedding videos, and playing host to random men who stay with them for a while.

Etgar Keret contributes 'A Good One', a strange story about a man travelling to New York to pitch an idea for a board game, who gets so wrapped up in a dream he had before leaving home, that he is not able to behave as he usually would.  Keret is, through his stories in McSweeney's (not to mention his excellent graphic novel Pizzeria Kamikaze), becoming one of my favourite authors.

I was a little surprised to see that Neil Gaiman had contributed a very short story to this book in 'Adventure Story', a nice little piece about a son helping his aging mother clean out his father's affects, who finds a statue of great significance to a hidden Mayan people.  This story has more than a little touch of the Borgesian about it, which is always appreciated.

Adam Levin has a long story in here, which comes from his new book Hot Pink.  It's about a man who discovers a strange crack in his bedroom wall one day.  The wall is oozing out a sort of gel, and over a period of months, the man becomes obsessed with this, to the point where he feeds some of the gel to his dog to learn if it is poisonous, and begins to ignore all of his familial obligations.  It's good stuff.

The book ends with a large collection of writing from the Egyptian Revolution, as compiled by Noor Elashi and Daniel Gumbiner.  Most of these pieces are taken from the Internet, and contain a variety of op ed articles, newspaper columns and articles, blog posts, and memoirs from the days of Tahrir Square and the months afterwards, as the failures of the people left in charge of the country became more apparent.  Like the work done through McSweeney's Voice of Witness oral history books, there is an immediacy to these writings which help to convey the heady days of revolution.  This is an essential collection for historians who will be studying this unprecedented time.

In all, a very good McSweeney's, but when are they not?

McSweeney's 38

Edited by Dave Eggers

I've never attended church or any other religious ceremony with any sort of regularity, saving such things solely for weddings, funerals, and a pair of odd attempts by my mother to 'try it out' when I was young.  As a book lover, and having no way to understand what was going on (I don't see this as a problem, but it does persist to today), I was usually more interested in the books conveniently stored in ledges in the back of the pew in front of me.  At least, until I opened them...

I bring this up because aesthetically, the newest edition of McSweeney's the literary quarterly, evokes for me the stiff, textured paperback hymnals of those days, right down to its deep forest green cover.  The difference, of course, is that I actually enjoyed reading this McSweeney's.

The book opens with a strong short story by Ariel Dorfman about a woman and her husband who have gone to Paris to enact a ritual of remembrance for the woman's brother, who disappeared thirty years prior in Chile.  I find her actions, which take on the role of performance art, as she places rag dolls at sites where partisans were shot during the Second World War to be touching, but the true weight of the story lies with the man in the hotel room next door, who is either attempting to kill someone, or is just making it sound like he is.

After that, we are given a lengthy piece of reportage on The Special Populations Unit of the Israeli army - forces made up of non-Israeli soldiers, mostly Bedouin and Druze.  Not unexpectedly, they are lured into the army with promises of equality and improved stations, but are still treated poorly.  The author, Chanan Tigay, tells of a reservist who receives his call to duty on the same day that he is informed that his house (where he was relocated by the army years prior) was illegal and would be bull-dozed.  With every article I read about Israel, my opinion of its leadership and institutionalized racism gets even worse.

My favourite piece in this McSweeney's is Nathaniel Rich's 'The Northeast Kingdom'.  This is a terrific short story about a very old man who just wants to work on his model airplanes.  As he gets closer and closer to holding the longevity world record, and as he gets increasingly harassed by reporters and relatives who want to know his 'secret', he and his grandson decide to fake their own deaths.  It's a very good piece of writing, with a nice ending.

Also of interest is Roddy Doyle's story 'The Hens', about a Polish architect who is hired by an Irish woman to look after her backyard chickens, and becomes embroiled in open warfare between three upper middle class women with nothing better to do.  It's hilarious.

This is followed by Steven Millhauser's re-working of the Rapunzel myth, Biji Adjapon's brutal story of girlhood in Ghana, and Rachel Glaser's tale of a woman who is at drift after her relationship ended.

There is an excerpt from the new Voices of Witness book that collects oral history around the topic of the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath.  This story, told by Talat Hamdani, whose son went missing on September 11th, is pretty interesting.  Her son, Salman, is believed to have gone to help out at the World Trade Center site, and was never seen again.  Later, the authorities began to act as if he was a suspect, and then the family suddenly received his body, or at least what they were told was parts of it.  The whole thing is suspicious, but as this is only an oral history, no investigative journalism was conducted to try to find out what really happened.  While I found the woman's story gripping, I feel like this piece also reveals some of the weaknesses and limitations of oral history.

Finally, the book ends with the first chapter of an upcoming novel (it is not named) by Dave Eggers.  It's about a fifty-six year old man who is facing bankruptcy, and has one final chance to make his fortune, by starting up a business in Saudi Arabia.  It's Eggers, so it's good.

Once again, this quarterly does not disappoint.

Zeitoun

by Dave Eggers

When I pick up and start a new book by an author I like, I usually know very little about its content going in.  In this case, I knew that the book was about a man who stayed behind in New Orleans when the city flooded after Hurricane Katrina, and that's all I knew.  Because the book is a non-fiction account by Dave Eggers, who wrote the brilliant What is the What, I didn't need to know anything more.

Except, that's only what some of the book is about.  It's what happened just before that water started to recede, and after that, that makes this book, and the life of Abdulrahman Zeitoun, so amazing.

Zeitoun is a Syrian American, who after spending years at sea, settled in Louisiana.  He met Kathy, an American convert to Islam, and together they started both a family and a construction and contracting business.  They owned a variety of properties in New Orleans as well, and it made sense for Abdulrahman to stay in the city while everyone else evacuated, to care for his various business responsibilities, and to look after the family home.  The early part of the book is concerned with establishing the Zeitoun's in the reader's mind, and showing how consistently they behaved according to their personalities.

Once the flood begins, the book becomes gripping.  Zeitoun spends his days feeding his neighbours' abandoned pets, helping to rescue people, and checking on his properties.  He glides through the mostly abandoned city in his canoe, sometimes alone, and sometimes with his friend Nasser.  He manages to keep in touch with his wife, who by this time is in Phoenix staying with friends, through a daily telephone call.  At least, until the day that the calls simply stop, and the focus of the book is solely on Kathy, and her challenges in weathering this latest crisis.

Eventually (after a very suspenseful segment of the book, where the reader shares Kathy's anxiety), we learn that Zeitoun and his friends have fallen victim to the excesses of police and Homeland Security fears during those chaotic days, and the book shifts into a Kafkaesque journey through a broken criminal justice and anti-terrorism system.  This part of the book is incredible, all the more so for the fact that it is accurate and is talking about the United States.

Eggers excels at this type of book.  He refrains from allowing his authorial voice room to roam, sticking to the story and what happened, as it is remembered by Abdulrahman and Kathy, without succumbing to the temptation to editorialise or commentate.  His writing during the flood is clear and beautiful, and he imbues the horror of the situation with such sublime description as to make one want to be there.

This story is very important in the way that it portrays the failings of America to respond to peoples' needs during a crisis, and to maintain human rights.  It is even more important as a testament to the strength of Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun, their children, relatives, and friends.