RACHEL DONADIO, "Literary Letters, Lost in Cyberspace", The New York Times, September 4, 2005
From: Dave Eggers
To: Mary Porter
Subject: Re: Volunteer Application
Dear Ms. Porter,
Thank you for applying for a volunteer position at 826 Valencia. Unfortunately, upon review of your application and some discussion with associates in the kitchen of a woman who has seventeen great-grandchildren, we learned some details of your past opinions that were, to say the very least, unsettling. To wit:
- In September of 1992, your Honors English teacher (now a friend of mine) confiscated a notebook from you, upon which was written "Moby Dick Sucks."
- In July of 2001, on an extremely obscure McSweeney's-fan message board which, at its height, boasted 6 members, all of whom were shut-ins, you stated the following: "I love Dave's writing, but his public persona is beginning to distract me from it. He should shut his big fat mouth and get back to that book about whales he keeps promising us."
- In May of 2002, you went on a date with Todd Pruzan, a very decent human being, and never returned his phone calls.
A person's character is shown by his or her actions. Through these actions, you have shown that you are a cynical, pessimistic person who seeks to tear down other writers and we at 826 Valencia would be doing our students a great disservice if we allowed an insincere, un-genuine, ironic teacher to guide them. Feel free to stop by for all your pirate supply needs, however.
Sincerely As Always,
Dave Eggers
From: Dave Eggers
To: Vendela
Subject: Re: Fwd:: THIS IS NOT JUNK LETTER. BILL GATES IS SHARING HIS FORTUNE.
We should totally do this. If we forward enough of these, Bill Gates will pay us $250 a pop for each forwarded email. This could probably fund the mass pulping of How We Are Hungry..
From: Dave Eggers
To: Judas
Subject: Exile from the kingdom.
Neal,
I am writing this e-mail to tell you that I will never write you an e-mail again. Also, I was deeply disappointed to see where you recently quoted me in your interview with The Twin Cities Shopper as saying that "human beings are carbon-based life forms." If you remember correctly, Neal (and if not, there are several witnesses prepared to back me up), the full statement was, "Human beings are carbon-based life forms made up of approximately 60% water." I think you - and any fair observer - can see the vast differences in those two quotes. I've sent an angry, self-important letter to the paper. I expect a full and forthright apology immediately.
Best,
Dave
P.S. I'm never e-mailing you again. Seriously.
From: Dave Eggers
To: Viggo Mortenson
Subject: There are some things you should keep to yourself.
P.S. But especially the poetry.
From: Dave Eggers
To: The Eggskateers
Subject: Re: Fwd: Unsatisfactory feedback on your recent eBay transaction.
Hmm. So. Given the without-a-hitch-ness of my most recent auction, the feedback was, for balance, to be expected. Um. Not everything went as planned. To wit:
- As you may or may not know, we had placed up for auction a set of DVDs containing the entire first season of America's only truly great situation comedy, "Sanford and Son."
- While we bow to none in our admiration of this series, we want to emphasize that the set in question had never been opened. Ever. Oddly, we received duplicate copies from different admirers on the same day.
- So we decided to auction it off on ebay, hoping to use the funds obtained to purchase more pirate and pirate-related material. Assuming the item would generate a large number of bids, we set no reserve. Which was okay, but prevented us eventually obtaining the price we had in mind when we decided to sell the thing in the first place.
- One strange and unfortunate thing: In this particular auction a bidder known - even through his feedback ranking - for asking impertinent questions and generally making a nuisance of himself - quickly became the high bidder on the item. This bidder had been for a week or so poking around, e-mailing people with some association to me, by all accounts - and true to the nature of his particular bidding practice - in an effort to determine whether or not them item would play on all region DVD players or was only Region 1 (NTSC).
- This bidder's presence was upsetting, to me and to many of the auction participants. You see, when people bid on this item, many of them have experienced things very similar to the events that transpired on the program. For example, a bidder in his early thirties related how he had worked in a junkyard for several years. Another young woman had, just a year before, watched her father fake a heart attack while yelling, "I'm coming, Elizabeth!" The stories are incredible and wrenching, but are welcome. That's much of the point of an eBay auction -- meeting people who have been in whatever way affected by the item you've put up for bid, and talking to them about why and how. And essential to this transaction is the privacy of the attendee/sharer of similar experience.
- The problem was, during this particular auction, this bidder was hovering, after every bid, busily peppering the auctioneer with questions like, Is the security tape on the case still intact? At one point, while a woman was relating her disappointment with Redd Foxx's later series "The Royal Family", the bidder was so quickly and feverishly interjected with a question concerning the bonus material on the DVD, that all I could do was ignore his question, hoping he would take in the message implied and allow some privacy. She did not. He was subsequently asked by a friend of mine pretending to be an eBay employee to leave the auction, or at the very least raise the amount of his bid. He did not. It became a very icky scene, and carried on until well after the auction was complete.
- It's very hard to express how unsettling it all was. Such a contrast, between these kind and open bidders, happy to pay a $5 shipping and hanfling fee even if we do send the discs via media mail, and this high bidder, who not only won the bid but left me negative feedback, imperiling my good eBay name. It was very creepy. Wow was it creepy.
- Still, I want to thank all those who bid, and hope that despite the obviously misleading feedback "Item arrived packed in yellowed press reviews of You Shall Know Our Velocity, the negative portions of which contained handwritten rebuttals. Case was cracked and security tape was missing." you will continue to bid on our merchandise; there's a Jolly Roger flag we've got our eye on, and those things don't come cheap.
From: Dave Eggers
To: Gunberg [email protected]
Subject: Re: want to make ur tool real big 2340fejkbsdksf
Yes, I am interested in penis enlargement. VERY interested.
[Transcribed by Alex Balk and Lindsay Robertson.)
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