Reconstructing Realism in Post-Postmodern Narrative: Dave Eggers's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Abstract

By analysing Dave Eggers’s autofictional work A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, this article attempts to reveal the role of this author in the post–postmodern narrative of the turn of the millennium. Following in the wake of David Foster Wallace, Eggers’s solution to overcome the problems created by postmodernism is a kind of writing based on honesty. Through a rebirth of the author, the objective of Eggers’s New Sincerity is the democratization of narrative in order to create a sensibility network aimed at ending the solipsism brought about by postmodern linguistic relativism. However, this new sensibility is reminiscent of pre–postmodern fundamentalism. The use of meta–metafiction based on the use of neo–Romantic irony enables Eggers to create an escape valve that allows for the creation of a metamodern oscillation–as described by Tim Vermeulen and Robin van den Akker.