Despite coming out in 2014, Dave Eggers’ Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever? still strikes at a feeling all too familiar to anyone who has felt disheveled or disillusioned with the world. The protagonist, Thomas, clearly feels this way, and he has many questions about why the world is the way it is: what happens in the lives of people we view as more successful than us? Why spend astonishingly large amounts of money on war? How in the world did America end up the way it has become? Why are people like him not given a grand purpose to work towards and believe in? And for a sense of understanding or one of closure, Thomas does something drastic to interrogate this loss of meaning: he kidnaps the people he feels might have the answers.
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Thomas finds kidnapping people and chaining them to posts in an abandoned military base the easy part of his endeavor. Making his captees comfortable and open to talking to him is where the difficulty lies, but with a bit of dark humor and reassurance, dialogue ensues. Thomas is not a bad person, so he says; rather, he’s one person out of many who have been let to fall by the wayside, and he just wants some sense of purpose and something to believe in. After all, if he can kidnap an astronaut, a police officer, his own mother, and a few more people, what else could he have done given the opportunity?
With this book, Eggers definitely attempts to close the gap between an imagined society that we’re all a part of and the individuals that make up that society, yet I am hesitant to say the conversations go the way Thomas intended them to. Each person Thomas talks to gives him honest yet hard answers to his questions, which provide clarity but perhaps not satisfactory explanations. Yet he presses on kidnapping more people and asking more questions until his time runs out.
If this all sounds hilariously absurd, that’s because it is. The novel reads like a daydream or the conversation you have with yourself in the shower after you have had enough time to think of witty replies to bullies. Reading the novel would be all fun and games if it were not for the heavy subjects though, and this is the tightrope you walk with Thomas. In order to balance, you must hold the witty jokes, clever dialogue, and spritely pacing in one hand and war, traumatic childhood events, and kidnapping in the other.
If the plot doesn’t attract your attention, then Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever?, should end up on your reading list for its uncommon approach to form if nothing else. Right from the first page the complete lack of narration and the unusual number of em dashes will catch your attention, and, yes, the book consists entirely of dialogue only separated by the building numbers designating where the conversations take place. Eggers strips out narration, stage directions, dialogue ques, and absolutely everything else. All you’re left with are em dashes and dialogue, and the only thing more surprising than the impressive storytelling is that you’ll be doing the voices and making the gestures you just know the characters do in no time, and you’ll be laughing. I can’t stress enough that this book is just fun to read.
But this book is more than just fun; it’s relatable if you’re the kind of person who has felt so frustrated at not understanding why the world works the way it does and wanted answers. I do not want to guarantee that Eggers offers solutions here — that is going to be entirely up to you. But he does ask some good questions which offer a great deal to think about.
If you’re new to Eggers, this novel is a great starting point for understanding his sense of humor, heavy subjects, and playful form. If you’ve read Eggers before, then it’ll be easy to adjust to another one of his literary games and appreciate how he translates what his characters are feeling through form.
I wouldn’t advocate for Thomas’ approach to interrogating the world, — it’s a bit too literal for me— but maybe it is worthwhile to sit tight next to Kev, the astronaut, listen, answer some questions, and be honest for a few hours. Thomas does say he will let us go unharmed after all.
Your Fathers, Where Are They? And the Prophets, Do They Live Forever? by Dave Eggers
$14.10
8
Pros
- Compelling Writing Style
- Unique Form
- Fun Read
Cons
- Interrogative View of the World May Not Be for You
- Unique Form Can Take an Adjustment Period
- All Characters Other than Thomas are Paper Thin
