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The Cover for Dave Eggers' New Book is Just Precious

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MincnglyWhrdL'mer
06/18/09

In reply to The Cover for Dave Eggers' New Book is Just Precious
damn. this looks mildly like that brooklyn artist who does the highly refined pencil drawings of survivalists in the woods, wearing flattened animal hide masks with just the eyes exposed, he was in a show at PS1 some four years back - I'm blanking, and it's going to drive me NUTS
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Mama Penguino
06/18/09

In reply to The Cover for Dave Eggers' New Book is Just Precious
Maybe Eggers' book will be told from the mother's point of view. What it feels like to make a nice dinner for your family and have your bratty kid run around like a dork in his monster costume -- that same costume you've washed now every night for two weeks -- and when you finally call the good-for-nothings to the table to eat the meatloaf you spent all afternoon assembling, the mashed potatoes you made fresh, not from a box, and the ungrateful little bugger says he's going to "eat you up," which reminds you you haven't had sex in four weeks thanks to your husband's new account at work, maybe, maybe you've just had e-fucking-nuff. So you send the little bastard to his bedroom without any supper and you have the nicest hour of your day. Maybe that's what the new book is about?
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City_Dater
06/18/09

@Mama Penguino:

I'm mixing you a martini right now. Just sit down and I'll get it over there in a minute.
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If_I_Had_a_Poodle
07/17/09

@Mama Penguino: applause
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Mama Penguino
06/18/09

In reply to The Cover for Dave Eggers' New Book is Just Precious
Dave Eggers, "I'm going to eat you up!" she says shamelessly.
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MrInBetween
06/18/09

In reply to The Cover for Dave Eggers' New Book is Just Precious
Eggers is the Steve Jobs of publishers: Wrap your products in sleek, simple and faux-hip packages and the masses will clamor for it. Even if the insides aren't as revolutionary as you've led everyone to believe.
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skahammer
06/18/09

In reply to The Cover for Dave Eggers' New Book is Just Precious
Does no one else think that many, many ten-year-olds might be somewhat intrigued, in a good way, by this clever packaging?

And if it's a byproduct of Where the Wild Things Are, then isn't calling it "twee" kind of spectacularly missing the point?

I just don't understand the twee-bashing. None of it.
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PrincessKashmir
06/18/09

@skahammer: I generally understand and endorse twee-bashing, but I agree with you in this case.

Not everything everyone thinks, does or creates is for us (cynical, overeducated 20/30-somethings). This book seems pretty obviously aimed at kids, and I know exactly how I would have reacted if I were 8 and seeing this book on the shelves.
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skahammer
06/18/09

@PrincessKashmir: Age eight, you're right, not age ten.

Kids, feh. Who knows what's "age-appropriate" these days anyway?
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Mama Penguino
06/18/09

@skahammer: Thank you! Little P loves Where the Wild Things Are and will no doubt be horrified and enchanted by this book cover. Must we introduce weltschmertz when judging children's books?
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Airvault
06/18/09

In reply to The Cover for Dave Eggers' New Book is Just Precious
Fuck precious. One longs for the days when a writer would fight a bull instead of wrapping it up in twee and selling it.
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Crotty
06/18/09

@airvault: Do you mean Hemmingway? I don't think he actually fought any bulls. But he certainly did sentimentalize the bullfigting, and in a way render it twee.

Also, during sex, "the Earth moved out from under them." isn't that sort of twee?
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BadUncle
06/18/09

@Crotty: OK, how about machine gunning sharks in the Carribean? Is that twee?
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SaraRueful
06/18/09

@BadUncle: Sarah Palin's vacations are NOT twee!
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skahammer
06/18/09

@airvault: And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply PREVAIL. There was no point in fighting - on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave...

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

Sounds pretty twee to me. But also great. And I'd like to hear someone criticize Hunter S. Thompson as twee. A degenerate, narcissistic, cynical misogynist maybe, but twee? Feh.
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raincoaster
06/18/09

In reply to The Cover for Dave Eggers' New Book is Just Precious
Everything Eggers does is precious. But quite a lot of it is genius, too, so yes, we'll all buy this just in case it is.
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