‘More Broken Glass’

“I cannot in my wildest fantasies see myself making it past fifty or fifty-five,” wrote Dave Eggers in his first book, 2000’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. This March, he turned fifty-six. In that memoir, he made use of his family’s dramatic story—the sudden death of both of his parents during his early twenties and Egger’s subsequent experience raising his younger brother. But in later collaborative work, he took on the stories of others. Zeitoun told the story of a Syrian immigrant in New Orleans who paddled around in a canoe helping neighbors in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. What Is the What concerned a Sudanese refugee separated from his family during the country’s second civil war. Much of Eggers’s most important and lasting work has been as a founder and editor of magazines—most notably McSweeney’s and The Believer, which he helped create with his wife, the writer Vendela Vida (together they also wrote the film Away We Go).