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When Eggers\u2019s phone rings mid interview, he pulls out an old-fashioned flip phone. He writes first drafts by hand and then transfers his writing to a Mac computer from 1998 that has never been connected to the internet and is now patched up with duct tape. He has never seen the appeal of social media \u2013 \u201cI\u2019ve never seen Facebook. Like, I don\u2019t know what exactly happens on Facebook,\u201d he says \u2013 but ESPN sports news and watching old concerts on YouTube are a massive temptation. \u201cA\u00a0Kate Bush show from 1981, that\u2019s where I waste my time \u2026 so the last time I was online I did like a two-and-a-half-hour Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Connor concert.\u201d He did not have\u00a0internet access at home until he had to install it during the pandemic, a change that means, instead of writing in his garage, he now writes on a boat in San Francisco Bay \u201cto escape the internet\u201d. On his boat he has no phone reception and the only interruptions are the passing fishers and the occasional porpoise or harbour seal.<\/p>\n
Eggers was born in Boston and raised in Chicago, where his mother worked as a teacher and his father was a lawyer. He burst on to the literary scene in 2000 with the publication of his tragicomic memoir, A\u00a0Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which recounts how, after both of his parents died of cancer within weeks of one another, at the age of 21 Eggers became an acting parent to his eight-year-old brother, Toph. A year after the book was published, his sister Beth killed herself. Reporting suggests that he later became estranged from Toph. In a 2010 Guardian interview he describes the memoir as an \u201caberration\u201d. He rarely gives interviews, does not like to use the first-person \u201cI\u201d in his writing, and will no longer talk about this extremely painful chapter of his life. I was warned by two people not to go there, and whenever our conversation veers close to personal, he becomes visibly uncomfortable. Today, only Prudence is baring all.<\/p>\n
826 Valencia Street, San Francisco, the centre for young writers that Eggers co-founded in 2002.<\/p>\n
He started work on his new novel, Contrapposto, around 20 years ago, when he began \u2013 as he always does \u2013 jotting notes for a story set in the art world on random bits of copy paper that very slowly accumulated in a box. The novel spans six decades and follows the friendship, and thwarted romance, between Cricket and Olympia, who meet as children when Olympia, a very worldly 10-year-old, commissions Cricket, a reclusive, art-loving nine-year-old, to write ornate, pornographic graffiti on the playground. This becomes the first of many artistic collaborations. Usually, it only takes about five years for a box filled with notes to become a book, but Eggers says it took turning 50 for him to understand it was possible to write a story like Contrapposto because people are surprisingly consistent. \u201cMost of my friends I\u2019ve had since first or second grade, and none of us changed much. We have the exact same relationship,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
I had wondered about the similarities between Cricket and Eggers, but he quickly quashes that. It is true that he loved drawing as a child, but he was an \u201cactive, antsy kid\u201d who was friends with all the naughty boys. It is true he, too, briefly studied art at his local state university, and once interned at a snooty gallery that received not a single visitor for a whole week, but the similarities end there. Unlike Cricket, who struggles to make a living in art because he refuses to compromise and cannot make deadlines, Eggers is, by necessity, practical. He sells prints of his art \u2013 he\u2019s made many animal drawings with amusing juxtaposed captions, like a slightly forlorn-looking bear beneath the phrase \u201cOh God the beauty will kill me\u201d \u2013 to pay the rent on the library, and he finds satisfaction in meeting the numbers each month.<\/p>\n
One theme that runs throughout Contrapposto is the complex relationship between talent and success. One character points out that the most talented guitarist you\u2019ll ever see is probably playing in a Journey cover band in Reno \u2013 \u201cwhich I\u2019ve seen, you know,\u201d Eggers says. \u201cBest guitarist I ever saw was in Reno in some bar.\u201d It\u2019s not only because of a lack of opportunity. Sometimes people are talented but lack the right ideas, he says. Sometimes their skill simply isn\u2019t valued for esoteric reasons \u2013 he finds it strange, for instance, that we place so little artistic value on those streetside artists who draw portraits for tourists. \u201cI\u2019m astounded when I see some of them, what they can do,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Before I leave, we flick through our sketches one more time. He says generous things about my work, because that is the kind of thing he\u2019ll always do for aspiring artists. There is one drawing of his that he thinks he\u2019ll keep. It\u2019s a sketch of Prudence facing away from us and pulling playfully at the end of one of her dark braids. The image manages to bring about a sense of motion: you can almost feel Prudence tugging on her hair. He conveys the impression of looseness, while retaining total control.<\/p>\n