Reviews
"Utterly hysterical. This book gets it exactly right -- the tone, the form, the kind of naive narrative that implies that all this is perfectly normal. I laughed out loud so frequently I was amazed, because I'm not that easy to make laugh out loud. Bravo." -- Eric Idle "A funny, macabre, and inspired modern fable about a boat and its captain. If there is any further metaphor involved, though, it is totally lost on me." --B. J. Novak "A shattering, hilarious, spellbinding siren call from the deck of one of our greatest storytellers and prophets." --Eve Ensler "It is difficult these days to portray the sheer, numbing, terrifying, unprecedented strangeness of what is happening in contemporary maritime life. One wants to say it mirrors politics? But truly no metaphor quite captures the sense of peril, nausea, uncertainty, and constant upheaval we feel on angry seas while under bad command. The worry is that you stop trying to describe it. That is why Dave Eggers's novel is such an accomplishment: it reminds us of how bad it is right now, how we have a moral obligation to keep noticing it, and not get quietly used to it. I'm talking about boat life. Nothing else. Nothing else." --John Hodgman "There is a peculiar kind of cathartic feeling that comes from desperate, worried laughter. This kept happening to me while reading this book. The Captain and the Glory is completely absurd and true. It is as funny as it is scarily reflective of our times and current president. Eggers has given us an essential American satire, a depiction of this administration that doesn't simply deny it as an abomination--which it is--but carries us through an illustration of a parallel imaginary world that delights and defames and is just so good and funny." --Tommy Orange If the normal daily diet of news makes you think that Lord Byron was right -- that you should laugh so you do not weep -- then let Dave Eggers help you do just that. --George F. Will, "With hilariously identifiable characters, chillingly brazen criminality, and burgeoning totalitarianism conveyed in a mesmerizing, fairy-tale cadence, Eggers, in concert with nimble and expressive illustrator Russell, presents an ingenious, incisive, grimly entrancing fable reflecting our nation's ever more alarming predicament." -- Booklist "Utterly hysterical. This book gets it exactly right -- the tone, the form, the kind of naive narrative that implies that all this is perfectly normal. I laughed out loud so frequently I was amazed, because I'm not that easy to make laugh out loud. Bravo." --Eric Idle "A funny, macabre, and inspired modern fable about a boat and its captain. If there is any further metaphor involved, though, it is totally lost on me." --B. J. Novak "A shattering, hilarious, spellbinding siren call from the deck of one of our greatest storytellers and prophets." --Eve Ensler "This dark fable is a piercing look at the foibles of our time." --Admiral James Stavridis USN, Supreme Allied Commander at NATO (2009-2013) "It is difficult these days to portray the sheer, numbing, terrifying, unprecedented strangeness of what is happening in contemporary maritime life. One wants to say it mirrors politics? But truly no metaphor quite captures the sense of peril, nausea, uncertainty, and constant upheaval we feel on angry seas while under bad command. The worry is that you stop trying to describe it. That is why Dave Eggers's novel is such an accomplishment: it reminds us of how bad it is right now, how we have a moral obligation to keep noticing it, and not get quietly used to it. I'm talking about boat life. Nothing else. Nothing else." --John Hodgman "There is a peculiar kind of cathartic feeling that comes from desperate, worried laughter. This kept happening to me while reading this book. The Captain and the Glory is completely absurd and true. It is as funny as it is scarily reflective of our times and current president. Eggers has given us an essential American satire, a depiction of this administration that doesn't simply deny it as an abomination--which it is--but carries us through an illustration of a parallel imaginary world that delights and defames and is just so good and funny." --Tommy Orange If the normal daily diet of news makes you think that Lord Byron was right -- that you should laugh so you do not weep -- then let Dave Eggers help you do just that. --George F. Will
