Dave Eggers: Escaping the Postmodern

Prior scholarship has identified Dave Eggers’ work as postmodern, focusing on the preface to A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (A.H.W.O.S.G.). Because this prefacing indicates Eggers’ status as the subjected author of postmodernity, it is easy to dismiss him as a postmodern author. The establishment of Eggers as a conscientious author aware of the pitfalls of the postmodern author-subject provides the acknowledgment necessary for Eggers to move beyond the postmodern realm. His memoir is a transitional piece of literature. It serves as a bridge from the postmodern to the contemporary state of literature concerned with the transgression of all boundaries, a state I term connectivism. Thus, Eggers’ three major works since A.H.W.O.S.G. (You Shall Know Our Velocity, How We Are Hungry, and What is the What) and the formation of his publishing company, McSweeney’s, are examples of how authorship, literature, and literary culture have moved beyond the postmodern.