On
Monday, July 31st the
Mcsweeneys.net website published
a piece written by Dave Eggers
and entitled "A Very Special
Episode Of: Ask the McSweeney's
Representative." The piece
concerned myself, the FoE!
Log, and the recent reprint
of Beth Eggers comments (from #6)
in the August 2000 issue of Harper's.
I
have decided to excerpt and
annotate (with my comments) the
entire piece below.
__________
Diane,
the McSweeney's staff person,
recently indicated to me that
there were letters to our website
regarding an excerpt attributed
to me in the August Harper's. I
had not seen this excerpt, or
heard about it. I'm currently in
a two-room house, an hour outside
of Reykyavík, and have been for
three weeks, and will be for some
time more. I have no access to
the web or to e-mail, and I
haven't seen any American
periodicals at all since I've
been here, save the model
airplane magazines I cannot
function without and thus have
delivered via air mail.
So.
I won't say anything about the
rant written by me and reprinted
without my permission, because I
stand by it, even while
acknowledging that it goes, a bit
here and there, over the top. My
family and I would, however, like
to respond to the reprint of the
correspondence from my sister
Beth.
Now,
my sister Beth did indeed
correspond with a 16 year old boy
[13.a] who publishes a
website which, creepily enough,
talks mostly nicely and in detail
about me. (At his age I had a
weird thing for Dave Marsh.) [13.b]
Now, have I seen this
website? I have not. Was I aware
that my sister Beth had ever
written to the young man, or that
he had posted this correspondence
on this website? I was not.
This
is what happened:
Shortly
after Beth first wrote to the
website proprietor, she e-mailed
him again, indicating her regrets
about what she had written. [13.c]
She told him that her
comments were prompted by a
series of book reviews, none of
which, for justifiable reasons,
included her in their plot
summaries. She was being
immature, she said, and asked the
young man to take down her
remarks.
He
did not take down her remarks.
[13.d]
Then
one day Beth received a phone
call, at home, from a
representative of Harper's. How
they found her hometown or phone
number she could not fathom.
Sitting here now, looking at the
fog rise from this narrow blue
fjord in western Iceland, I also
cannot fathom how they found the
phone number of my sister, a
not-public person. [13.e]
Is
this creepy? It is. But the
creepiness escalates:
There
was someone on the phone,
representing Harper's, asking my
sister if she had indeed
corresponded with the young man.
Because she regretted having
e-mailed those words in the first
place, she considered lying to
this person, disavowing any
responsibility.
But
because she, like the rest of us,
was raised well, she decided that
she would likely tell the truth.
First, however, she asked the
Harper's representative if the
magazine intended to reprint the
exchange. No, no, said the
Harper's representative. We're
just curious, he said. The voice
in the phone actually said that.
He said, "We're just
curious." [13.f]
So
she sighed and came clean. Yes,
she said, she had written those
words, but regretted having done
so, didn't know what had come
over her. She told the Harper's
voice, attached to a person who
seemed friendly and
compassionate, that she had
written them while in a strange
mood, that they didn't reflect
her actual feelings at all,
etcetera.
I'll
just let her respond in this
excerpt from a much longer note
she asked me to publish:
"Sometimes
you look back on something you
said or wrote and you just can't
believe the words came out of
you. And I wrote that note to a
16-year-old! I'm so embarrassed. [13.g]
I was having a really
terrible LaToya Jackson moment, I
guess after reading the millionth
review of the book that glossed
over my role in the whole family.
... Anyway, there's no point in
coming up with excuses. The fact
is that Dave gave me a draft of
the book very early on and urged
me to make any corrections to it
that I saw fit. And I made about
30. I asked for some additions,
and some deletions, and some
changes. He told me beforehand
that he would make any changes
the family wanted, and after
getting my draft back, he made
good on his promise and made all
of them. ... I've never had a
problem with the book. Like I
said on the other Website, I
loved the book. (No surprise
Harper's omitted that part of my
original letter.) And it wasn't
anyone's responsibility to write
_my_ story. Dave wrote his, and
that's how he wrote it. All I
really wanted, from the moment I
first hit the "send"
button, was to take all that
stuff back. I tried to take it
back from that stupid Website,
and I tried to take it back when
I talked to the Harper's editor
who called me.... [13.h]
And the diary stuff I was
complaining about—Dave asked
me to point out how many things
in his book were even helped by
my diaries, and I could only find
a few paragraphs. God, I just
sound like such the prototypical
jealous sibling. I only wish I
had never sent the email. I don't
know the Web very well, and I
thought [the website in question]
was seen by 10 or 15 people. [13.i]
I never thought any of that would
appear in some place like
Harper's. [13.j]
What is happening in the world
when a magazine like that is
reprinting an email from me,
anyway? The National Enquirer
would be expected to do such a
thing, but Harper's? It's all so
weird. But I don't shirk any
blame. I'm sorry. I'm just plain
sorry."
So
we all know what happened next.
Even though the voice on the
phone told my sister that her
correspondence would not be
reprinted, it was. Meanwhile,
Toph and I were in Iceland,
finishing the next issue of
McSweeney's, and trying to find
some good melon—not an easy
task in this part of the world.
Toph heard about the Harper's
situation first, from a friend.
Like me, he had not seen any of
this until Harper's reprinted it.
He was, of course, very upset.
[13.k]
He
told me about it, and we have
been talking about it a good deal
since. Beth and her regrets
aside, my family is hoping that
magazines like Harper's will
please think twice before
publishing such things. We are
not sure why they, or anyone,
would want to act in a way that
would hurt our family, which, we
feel, has already had our share
of difficulties.
We
are begging for less malice. [13.l]
D.E.
_____
[13.a]
17-year-old man, thank
you very much.
[13.b]
The rock
critic?
Cool.
[13.c]
Yes, she did indicate
her regrets about what she had
written. In Beth's original
comments she had used profanity
and she did not want that to be
included. We mutually agreed that
her comments would still be
posted, albeit with her
gratuitous cussing excised.
[13.d]
This is important here,
so everyone listen up: Although
she said she was somewhat
uncomfortable with her comments,
in the end she consented to their
publication. Furthermore, she never
demanded her comments to be taken
down. If she had not wanted her
comments to be published, I would
not have published them. I am not
running some sort of scorched
earth gossip column here. This is
just for fun. She had something
interesting to say that I thought
the FoE! Log readers
would enjoy, so, with her
approval, I published it.
[13.e]
When Harper's
was doing its background check to
make sure that Beth's comments
were authentic, the
"Readings" editor asked
me for her contact information so
that he could check with her
directly. During the course of
our e-mail interview in March
Beth had given me her phone
number and e-mail address. I sent
these to the Harper's
"Readings" editor.
[13.f]
I cannot speak for Harper's
in this space. However, I would
like to point out that the
magazine acted professionally in
all of its dealings with me.
[13.g]
Hindsight is 20/20. But I must
say: This whole episode must
confirm all of those jokes about
how teenagers know more about the
Internet than adults, and that
they are screwing over the entire
25-and-over population with their
skills.
[13.h]
Beth did express her
doubts about her comments but,
again, she never tried to
actually take them back. The FoE!
Log is, when you get right
down to it, just a fun little
literary/media experiment, not an
investigative journalism vehicle.
I must say that I dealt with both
Beth and Harper's in the
most professional manner possible
and I do not regret any of the
actions that I took.
[13.i]
To be quite honest, if
Beth's comments had not appeared
in the FoE! Log, the
number of people who had seen her
comments would have indeed been
quite low. However, it seems that
just about everyone that cares
about Eggers and his literary
status is reading this Log
(except, evidently, Eggers
himself), so I guess those are
just the breaks.
[13.j]
At the time, neither did I.
[13.k]
Dave Eggers is, for all
intents and purposes, a literary
rock star. His privacy is not of
my concern. Beth Eggers contacted
me and, upon her own accord,
expressed her feelings to me. She
agreed to have her comments
published and, despite her
regrets, she cannot claim any
wrongdoing on either my part or Harper's.
But Toph is a different story.
He, like the family of any
celebrity, does not need to be
brought into the limelight (or
indirectly hurt by it). For this
I am sorry.
[13.l]
I do not believe that any action
taken on the part of myself or Harper's
was committed with malice.
Beth said quite a few things
which never made it into the FoE!
Log because I decided to
somewhat censor her comments for
the benefit of all of those
involved.. However, I believe
that the comments that were
published were factual,
informative, and of pertinent
interest to FoE! Log
readers. It should also be noted
that Eggers made his family's
situation a public one when he
published "Staggering
Genius." His life, for
better or for worse, is now part
of the public dialogue. And he
knew this would be the case when
he wrote the book.
_____
Five
final points:
1) All
of the correspondence between
Beth Eggers and myself took place
via e-mail and it all still
resides in the inbox and 'sent'
items folders of my e-mail
program. Dave, I would be happy
to forward to you every e-mail
that I have related to the
situation if you so desire. That
way you can see exactly
what was said, by who, and when.
Just let
me know
if you want them.
2) Question: Would it be pretty
safe to assume that I am now at
the top of Eggers' blacklist? [3.f]
3) If, in the future, this FoE!
Log comes back to haunt me,
I fully intend to claim that it
was just a "youthful
indiscretion."
4) There is much of this
situation which will remain
unsaid at this time. But let me
just say that it revolves around
one important word: money.
5) The FoE! Log will now
revert back to its traditional
content and mission (that is, to
explore the Dave Eggers literary
phenomenon). Please return for
the 14th edition of the Log.
It will be published on Thursday,
August 3rd.
