Held captive by an incoherent frontier spirit

Dave Eggers’s latest novella is a compelling read, though not up to his last two novels
Over-Eggered: the prolific US writer and publisher’s latest book falls short of his best work (Picture: Geoffrey Swaine/Rex)
Geoffrey Swaine/REX
Andrew Neather26 June 2014

Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever? by Dave Eggers (Hamish Hamilton, £14.99)

Since Dave Eggers took the US literary scene by storm in 2000 with his memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, his output has been both prolific and daring. As well as a series of highly-praised novels and non-fiction works, he has spawned a slew of literary journals and an independent publishing house, McSweeney’s. His latest novella, Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever? stretches his toying with literary forms to new lengths.

It is short — just over 200 pages, its title a line from Ezekiel — and composed entirely of dialogue. The protagonist, Thomas, is a troubled 34-year-old on America’s west coast. Looking for answers to his rage and frustration, he kidnaps a series of people: a NASA astronaut; a retired local congressman; his own elderly mother; one of his former schoolteachers; a policeman; and a hospital administrator. He imprisons them in different buildings at a vast, abandoned military base. Their interrogations compose this book.

His questions for the latter three abductees focus on what, it becomes clear, is the focal point of his anger and resentment — the shooting dead by police of a mentally ill friend, Don Banh, some years earlier.

Of the astronaut and the congressman— who, after initial bewilderment, show some sympathy — he demands more profound answers, connected both to his own wasted life and, by extension, to the waning of the American dream and the death of the frontier spirit. He sees these two men as frustrated symbols of a bolder America: the astronaut trained to fly on the space shuttle before its missions were ended by budget cuts; and the congressman who lost his legs in Vietnam.

“You should have found some kind of purpose for me,” rages Thomas to the politician. And later: “I’m the guy who you send to dynamite the mountain to make way for the railroad… I showed up 200 years too late for the life I was supposed to live.” Instead, in its place a venal and over-mighty corporate state thwarts personal ambition.

There are echoes here of the sadness and incomprehension at the implosion of the American dream that underpinned the story of Alan Clay, the failed middle-aged businessmen of Eggers’s 2012 novel, A Hologram for the King. Yet while that book involves a sharp critique of US economic decline, here Thomas’s rage is largely incoherent.

It is clear why, in part, from his mother’s interrogation, which lays bare Thomas’s broken home and her own hinted-at alcoholism and mental illness. He himself has a history of mental problems too: “You were screwy out of the womb,” his mother tells him.

One last kidnapping as Thomas’s adventure lurches towards its inevitable conclusion suggests he really is just mad. “Don’t you think that the vast majority of the chaos in the world is caused by a relatively small group of disappointed men?” he asks the congressman. It’s a dispiritingly simple summing-up for such an odd, tight piece of fiction: a compelling read, though not up to Eggers’s last two novels.

Go to standard.co.uk/booksdirect to buy this book for £12.99, or phone 0843 060 0029, free UK p&p

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