Friday, September 26, 2008

What is the What?

A review of Dave Eggers' What is the What by Matt Anderson

Eggers, Dave. What is the What. Vintage: New York, 2007. 560 pp., paper, $15.95.

When taking on the project, David Eggers embraced the incredible task of sifting through Sudanese refugee Valentino Achak Deng’s many letters, emails, and interviews. This is a story the former refugee wants to send out to the world, to bring attention to the crimes being committed against the people of Sudan, but doesn’t yet have the proficiency to write. The process called for Eggers to create some stories based on Valentino’s voice, which has detracted from its authenticity for some critics (the title of the novel lightly veils its autobiographical nature). But to bring too much attention to that idea is to miss the point; that there are thousands more stories like this, only few of which survived to be told.

Although the book is heavy weighing in at 560 pages, Eggers’ fear of losing something important has left us to linger at different sections of the journey. That, though, is one of the book’s few shortcomings as much of the remaining story is told from the voice of a boy that has been forced to grow faster than his mind can handle, a voice Eggers said in an interview was unavoidable: “Valentino’s voice is so distinct and unforgettable that any other authorial voice would be pale by comparison.”

The novel balances past and present, giving Valentino the medium through which to tell his story, directing it to the people he encounters throughout the novel: the people who rob him at his home at the start of the book, TV Boy, neighbors, friends, members of the gym at which he works, only he’s not really speaking to them. Characters come and go along the journey, forcing Achak to face death early and often. “It was not interesting to us to hear of more violence and loss,” he says early on in his journey. This is the most unsettling fact about the situation in Sudan, that people are being killed senselessly by the Muslims, the Sudanese government, Ethiopians, basically anyone they come across. Others are being taken by nature: lack of water, lack of food, hungry animals, and more.

The events depicted in the book are often graphic and jarring in a way that forces us to recognize the horrors of the conflict. Children are recruited and killed. It is sometimes so catastrophic that some events seem almost unbelievable (like when his plane to America was scheduled to take off on 9/11). While that is true, one must remember in reading this book you are reading more than a novel or autobiography. You are reading an announcement to the world, one that desperately needs to be heard. We—readers and writers alike--are called to follow Achak’s advice: “I am alive and you are alive so we must fill the air with our words.”

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