What is the What is a novel that toes the fiction / non-fiction line brilliantly and for the exactly correct reason: to render a historical account as truly subjective and first person, to put you in the context of the events with all the real visceral sensations, longings, and far too often in this man's story, pains. I was wary going in; for one, the book is largely based on a traveling narrative, an extremely useful literary technique (the main character can pass through a series of scenery and events in convenient fashion), but one that from Jane Eyre to Lord of the Rings has always made my brain ache. For another, the main character has led such an unfortunate (literally: unlucky) life that I felt the book might use this as its emotional crutch. Worst, the outgoing, overeager, overly polite and socially naive African immigrant has become, maybe solely due to Coming to America, something of a cliche in my mind, and I also thought that playing to Deng's innocence relative to America, despite the horrors of his childhood, would be another stick on which the narrative might lean.
Dave Eggers's novel does none of these things, and I was very interested in paying particular attention as to how the writing accomplished this. The main narrative structure is Valentino Achek Deng relating his story to strangers (albeit in a thought, not spoken, way) in the American present. The first pair of strangers are a couple that trick Deng into letting them into his apartment, assault him and then rob him. This act of violence as framework, a device reused from Eggers's previous novel And You Shall Know Our Velocity, and starts him telling his tale in a possibly somewhat predictable "you have no idea what these eyes have seen" manner. But that is where the predictability stops. In part it is because the Sudanese narrator's tales are so vivid and plainly told; his childhood of gunfire, burning villages, death by lion, friends being picked at by vultures, burying bodies, witnessed executions... this list could clearly go on forever... is told with a simultaneously sullen and matter of fact delivery that clearly details how macabre his everydays of youth were. The short version is that eight year old Deng, a member of the "Lost Boys" of Sudan, was brutally chased from his burning village at the beginning of the 2nd Sudanese Civil War, walked to Ethiopia to love in a refugee camp for two years, was violently chased from there and walked to Kenya, where he lived in a UN sponsored refugee camp for the remainder of his childhood. Along the way he watches a multitude of friends, family, fellow orphans, mothers, babies, etc. die so often that he barely stops to mention it at points. His life has seemed cursed as long as he can remember, but he somehow manages to keep his head up through his wavering faith, but now this, even in America, his misfortune cannot be escaped.
The narrative in the present continues along these lines; Deng is eventually rescued by his roommate only to spend 14 hours waiting for an MRI at the hospital (he has no insurance). The narrative technique continues, as Deng shares his tale with the nurse at the desk in the ER, and later with members of the gym where he works as an ID checker (the structure broke down a bit at this point, imho, as Deng continued to tell his story to these random gym members' faces on his computer screen, a move that was not as powerful as his earlier character audiences). With this much misfortune and suffering, the book had every reason to turn into a gigantic drag, and a boring one at that - miles and miles of starving, walking and ghastly sites, however punctuated by lion attacks, can only stay vibrant for so long.
And yet, Eggers keep sit vibrant throughout. His flash between the present and the past allows this to happen to some extent, but his back narrative is more or less linear: on a few occasions, facts are revealed and then explained later, but for the most part you watch Deng grow through these orally thought narratives. And this is where the author excels - despite the mayhem of life, Deng remains always a growing boy and man; you witness his first sexual experiences, his fraternization with the other boys, his love for his adoptive families along the way, and the many ways he tackles his daily life with the amazingly hopeful eyes of childhood. Eggers renders this in a way that, I cannot stress enough, never broaches on the cheesy, a trap that I think would have been very easy to fall into here. Deng struggles, and mightily, and depending on your reading of the novel you could surmise that despite his better efforts he ultimately fails, or rather, he was destined to and did accordingly. Deng is not so simple as to keep his head up above the pain; he lives in and through it, consciously making efforts to save himself at times and doing right at others. Deng is nothing short of painted real; I cannot tell whether to credit Eggers with this rendering or Deng's own real life character. It puts "based on a true story" movie catches to shame.
Deng emphatically does not reach heaven at the end. His life in the U.S. is surely blessed, relatively speaking, and he appreciates this greatly, but recognizes fully that his own problems continue on and to such an extent that he continues to think himself cursed. Eggers has him end the tale on a very conflicted note, something that was really the only problem of the book. Spoiler: Here is the section below, the closing paragraph:
"Whatever I do, however I find a way to live, I will tell these stories. ... I speak to you because I cannot help it. It gives me strength, almost unbelievable strength, to know that you are there. ... I am alive and you are alive so we must fill the air with our words. I will fill today, tomorrow, every day until I am taken back to God. I will tell stories to people who will listen and to people who don't want to listen, to people who seek me out and to those who run. All the while I will know that you are there. How can I pretend that you do not exist? It would be almost as impossible as you pretending that I do not exist."
On the one hand, this is immensely powerful and an immensely guilt inducing stab to all those who pretend to care. Deng's mere presence as a historical orator breathes life into his struggles and those of his people, and it is this vibrant telling that serves as his purpose and meaning - he is a walking reminder that the rest of the world is real, and that they should not be ignored. It gives his entire tale an emphatic exclamation point, and a shimmering thing to hold on to as he continues to struggle, even in the great U.S.
On the other hand, this is the only part of the book that I felt was a copout on Eggers's part. Deng tells his story throughout the novel not as some kind of evangelical mission but in order to explain everything that is real to him. And what has become painfully real to him in the last part of the story is that despite all he has done and experienced, a large bit of his experience has and will be chaotic and cruel; the undertone of nothing matters and that God does not care run rampant throughout the book. So I am torn by his parting shot - it is typically Deng to keep on through everything, of course, but it is atypical of him to be so righteous about it. Deng's survival is testament and meaning unto himself, but his resignation to fate and his lack of a rebellion are sad, and his righteousness seems feigned. This is not the "powerful, uncrushable human spirit" theme that is meant to be expressed, but it is the message I take, and I think ultimately a more real / meaningful one - that man can be kicked beyond all reasonable limits, and that sometimes there is nothing you can do except talk, hoping that it will give you solace and that maybe there is a billionth of a percent of a chance that it will make things better for others.
In short, amazing novel. Brilliant story, brilliantly told. "The What" to which the title refers is based on a Sudanese myth about the creation of the world, that the Deng were given a choice between the cattle and nice land or "the What." The Deng chose the cattle, a security that seems to be fleeting at best. A surface reading would make "the What" be the great unknown, risk and chance at reward, the two in the bush taken over the one in the hand. I think the What is both more and less complicated than that - it is really just the What - the unknowable other options, the ineffable space out there, neither necessarily good nor bad or evil or ecstatic but potentially all of those things. It is also sadly inevitable, and neither as in your hands or in the Dengs' hands as anyone would like to think.
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