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The novels of David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers and Jonathan Safran Foer are increasingly regarded as representing a new trend, an ‘aesthetic sea change’ in contemporary American literature. ‘Post-postmodernism’ and ‘New Sincerity’ are just two of the labels that have been attached to this trend. But what do these labels mean? What characterizes and connects these novels? Den Dulk shows that the connection between these works lies in their shared philosophical dimension. On the one hand, they portray excessive self-reflection and endless irony as the two main problems of contemporary Western life. On the other hand, the novels embody an attempt to overcome these problems: sincerity, reality-commitment and community are portrayed as the virtues needed to achieve a meaningful life. This shared philosophical dimension is analyzed by viewing the novels in light of the existentialist philosophies of Søren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Albert Camus.

This article argues for a view of the gift as an affective network and investigates how Dave Eggers's practice of publishing second editions works to produce this network. Framing my discussion of the gift with Sara Ahmed's work on affective economies, I suggest that the gift, like affect, is best understood as a surplus effect of circulation. I argue that Eggers negotiates the gift's double bind by emphasizing the impossibility of identifying a \"pure\" gift or an authoritative \"original\" edition; his double editions show how the gift survives through the surplus values generated by their ongoing circulation. Eggers's symbolic and material gift network ultimately depends on the uncertainty and mystification emblematic of Eggers's anxious aesthetic and mode of recirculation, adding to critical conversations that position Eggers's aesthetic within movements of new sincerity or post-irony.

One Man Zeitgeist: Dave Eggers, Publishing and Publicity undertakes the first extensive analysis of the works of Dave Eggers, an author who has grown from a small-time media upstart into one of the most influential author-publishers of the twenty-first century. Eggers rise to fame is charted in careful detail, offering analysis of the circumstances of his success and their effects on the production of his literary oeuvre. As both a memoirist and novelist Eggers has distinguished himself from his cohort of young American authors by insisting on seizing the reins of his publishing output. The nature of this independent streak is given attention in this study, particularly the cultural circumstances of a digitalised, consumer society in which books and literature are primarily commodities. Hamilton examines this spirit of independence as both a practical and figurative state in Eggers' works, and seeks to address the reasons why in a contemporary, globalised society independence is not only personally gratifying for Eggers but also a popularly successful strategy for producing books.

Understanding Dave Eggers is the first book-length study incorporating Egger’s novels, short-story collections, and films by surveying thematic and stylistic developments in the work of one of the most celebrated American authors of the twenty-first century. Timothy W. Galow offers a textual analysis centered on major issues in academic scholarship, but explores them in an accessible way that gives Eggers’s texts primary attention. Unlike other scholarship on Eggers, this work uniquely combines Egger’s early autobiographical works and the subject of celebrity as well as his later texts that deal with humanitarian issues. Galow devotes a chapter to each of Eggers’s major works, from his first book, the Pulitzer Prize–nominated memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, though his most recent novel, A Hologram for the King, a National Book Award finalist about an aging American businessman chasing success in Saudi Arabia. Other chapters cover You Shall Know Our Velocity, What Is the What, and Zeitoun. Each chapter studies the major themes and styles of the featured work while also placing it in the context of Eggers’s oeuvre. In this way Galow examines each text in its own right, but he also offers us a larger guide to all of Egger’s work. Providing important historical background for understanding Eggers’s literary work, Galow examines how Eggers’s texts are deeply invested in both his own public persona and the changing cultural conditions in the United States over the past twenty years. Galow’s careful analysis is conveyed in clear language that engages issues important to contemporary critics without being pedantic or jargon laden. As a result Understanding Dave Eggers can serve as a useful introduction to the author’s work or a valuable resource for the devoted reader.

Eggers is one of the most notable writers of his generation, recognized for such bestsell­ing and critically acclaimed books as A Hologram for the King, What Is the What, and The Circle. Before he embarked on his writing career, Eggers was classically trained as a draftsman and painter. He then spent many years as a professional illus­trator and graphic designer before turning to writ­ing full-time. More recently, in order to raise money for ScholarMatch, his college-access nonprofit, he returned to visual art, and the results have been exhibited in galleries and museums around the country. Usually involving the pairing of an animal with humorous or biblical text, the results are wry, oddly anthropomorphic tableaus that create a very entertaining and eccentric body of work from one of today's leading culture makers.

To displace a paradigm within the philosophy of literature that monopolizes attempts to establish a connection between literature and social criticism—such is the aim of this essay. The paradigm is that literature uniquely conveys injustice, thereby complementing thematic reflection. To this purpose, I hope to add to the philosophy of literature's toolbox \"eudaemonistic\" readings, which explore how economic circumstances occasion unhappiness. My context is neoliberalism, and my example Lynn Steger Strong's Want. Focusing on parenting, privilege, and discovering the limits of nonconformist self-authorship, Want offers a particularly apt demonstration of social criticism untethered to injustice.

This essay explores Henri Bergson's idea of \"open love\" (a love that cares for all without preference, exclusion, or attachment), its relationship to religion, and its relevance for human rights. Open love is Bergson's solution to the problem of \"closed morality\" (our tendency to care for our own kind over others). Reading Dave Eggers' novel, 'What Is the what', alongside Bergson's work reveals that religion (Catholicism and human rights) is indispensable to the \"open morality\" demanded by human rights. Although religion and love are not often part of human rights discourse, both are fundamental for human rights to work.