Literary fiction is a genre that is hard to pin down, as it is almost always swaying with the force of current intellectual and political winds. One way to look at it is that literary fiction is the opposite of punk-rock, which, by its very nature, goes against the tide, with the artist following his own vision, heart, and worldview, no matter what anybody thinks. Or, at least, that's what punk-rock used to be. It's hard to tell now, with literature, music, and almost all of art passing through numerous filters, gatekeepers, and intellectual bleach before it is made widely available to the public.
Dave Eggers's novel, A Hologram For The King, is, by golly, a piece of literary fiction so literary, it is almost bursting with existential ache. The story, which is gossamer-thin, follows Alan Clay, a failing salesman who believes in capitalism and the American dream, and whose only chance to get out from under approaching bankruptcy is to convince the King of Saudi Arabia to buy a new hologram technology that Clay is selling on behalf of a big tech company back in America. What follows is a series of "incidents" that reveal Saudi Arabia to be a den of contradictions, with veiled woman hooking-up in secret, where expatriates smuggle contraband moonshine named "صديقى" or "friend" in English, and where chauffeurs make references to American popular culture. Interspersed with all this "whimsy" and "insight", are flashbacks to Alan's past, which reveal how sad and hollow his life is, culminating in him remembering the time he took his daughter to NASA to watch a shuttle launch, and saying to himself: "I sold capitalism to communists!" in sheer, orgasmic pride.
It's all well-written, in clear, smooth prose. But it's also all pretentious, self-important nonsense. None of the characters come off as very real, especially Eggers's depiction of Saudis, who all talk like sardonic Americans. And the main character, Alan Clay, is basically set-up from the get-go as a tragic figure: hollow, sexually impotent, and lost in his zealous dedication to a corrupt system - capitalism, of course - that has betrayed him and left him with nothing. While taking shots at unbridled capitalism could be an admirable goal if dealt with with nuance, insight, and clarity, Eggers's approach is nothing but a string of cliches and misery-mongering passages, making his point over, and over again without any subtlety or real insight, delivering a book that begins well enough, but slowly devolves into a boring, dour, and ultimately unredeeming tale as hollow as its main character.
But, of course, I could be wrong, as The Boston Globe calls the novel "genius", while The New York Times says that Eggers "spins [a] story that approaches Beckett in its absurdist despair.” Genius? Really? To each his own, I guess.
Text © Ahmed Khalifa. 2021.
Ahmed Khalifa is a filmmaker and novelist. He is the writer/director of the feature film Wingrave, released on Netflix, and the author of a number of novels and short stories, including the YA horror novel, Beware The Stranger, available on Amazon. Find him on Twitter @AFKhalifa and on Facebook @Dark.Fantastic.AK·Writer
