(2003-03-13) Dave Eggers Advocate

Just read Dave Eggers' 2000 interview with the Harvard Advocate. You expressed many of the feelings I used to have, when I was in high school and college, about some of the people I admired at the time, people who at some point disappointed me in some way, or made moves I could not understand. So I took a few passages from your questions - those pertaining to or hinting at "SellingOut (Sell Out)" - and I used them as a launching pad for a rant I've wanted to write for a while now, and more so than ever since my own book has become successful... Oh how gloriously comforting, to be able to write someone off... One less thing to think about. Now, how to kill off the rest of our heroes, to better make room for new ones?... The only thing worse than this sort of activity is when people, students and teachers alike, run around college campuses calling each other racists and anti-Semites. It's born of boredom, lassitude. Too cowardly to address problems of substance where such problems actually are, we claw at those close to us... The thing is, I really like saying yes. I like new things, projects, plans, getting people together and doing something, trying something, even when it's corny or stupid. I am not good at saying no. And I do not get along with people who Say No. When you die, and it really could be this afternoon, under the same bus wheels I'll stick my head if need be, you will not be happy about having said no. You will be kicking your ass about all the no's you've said... No is for wimps. No is for pussies. No is to live small and embittered, cherishing the opportunities you missed because they might have sent the wrong message... What matters is that you do good work. What matters is that you produce things that are true and will stand.

Dec'2013: Tom Scocca thinks this is Smarm (cf BullShit). Eggers is full of shit. He is so passionate, and his passion has such rhetorical momentum, that it is almost possible to overlook the fact that the literal proposition he's putting forward, in the name of large-heartedness and honesty, is bogus and insulting. Do not dismiss ... a movie? Unless you have made one?