The cool thing is to not like Dave Eggers, right? If you didn’t like this book, I can almost guarantee it’s because you don’t understand satirical writing. I read this book for the first time in high school, I was drawn in by the title... For someone to be so pompous, to make such a claim, the book couldn’t possibly be a flop, right? What kept me was the story... Eggers makes you want to laugh and cry at the same time. He marries comedy and tragedy in a way that is essential to survival... He does really well at conveying the uncertain nature of the situation they were thrust into. Yes, the title is a little self-adulating, but he does acknowledge in the preface that that was in honor of his father. Rereading it seven years later... While the references are dated, the experiences aren’t. 17 and reading this I thought Eggers was all that he said he was cracked up to be... 24, I see a typical twenty-something who thinks that their life is the most interesting thing that has ever happened. But... its more than that. The author is aware of his own ego, mocks it, even mocks his generation for the ego they share... If you finish this book thinking that the author is full of shit, you missed the point. The point is his half-formed, self-conscious metaphor of the lattice... The point is not for you to see what a cool dude Dave Eggers is, it’s for him to get this off of his chest.