For some reason just about everyone these days seems to dislike Dave Eggers. I ask friends – people who love the craft of writing – what they don’t like about him and they just shrug. “I can’t put my finger on it,” they say, “but something about him bugs.”

Well, I remain an Eggers loyalist. In fact, I have the utmost level of respect for the guy. I read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius while it was still in hardcover. His relationship with his brother Toph reminded me so much of my relationship with my sister at the time. And his multi-clausal, long-winded, footnoted intellectualizing as a coping mechanism for the often brutal transition to adulthood was more or less how I was going about things myself. I found in his prose a comrade in reflection, and as his writing has grown calmer and more simple in its maturation, I feel that I have also.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius granted Eggers license to publish just about whatever he wanted and still maintain a strong level of literary stardom across all segments of society. You Shall Know Our Velocity and How We Are Hungry are both excellent works of fiction and proved his ability as a career writer, not just another one-hit-wonder memoirist. Ever since, he has used his talent as a storyteller, his fame among the literary circle of cool, and his network of influence to spread awareness about harrowing issues that are left mostly ignored for years while all types of media focus on the latest stunt at the MTV music awards or the latest blond girl to go missing from a Caribbean cruise ship.

In addition to founding McSweeney’s (my favorite literary journal), Eggers also helped give rise to The Valentino Achak Deng Foundation, The Believer, the many 826 writing centers, and now The Zeitoun Foundation.

Both CB and I finished Zeitoun in just two days. For aspiring writers it is a lesson in lucidity, a reminder that clear writing almost always trumps lyricism when it comes to telling a good story. For history teachers 100 years from now, Zeitoun could easily serve as the embodiment of the best and worst of America during an era loosely defined by terrorism, paranoia, and incompetent governance.

I don’t have too much to say about the book itself, other than that everyone should read it. For me, it shows that Eggers has perfected the art of long-form journalistic writing, of writing as an act of listening, of using a talent and craft to help an amazing person tell an amazing story. I also highly recommend Stephen Elliot’s interview with Eggers at The Rumpus.