Dave Eggers wins at life

The only person I have been too tongue-tied to talk to since arriving in New York has been Dave Eggers, whose accomplishments are truly staggering. His latest awesomeness in written form is Zeitboun, a book about one Syrian-American man’s experience during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and his subsequent nightmare of an arrest. Eggers wrote from the Zeitouns’ family point of view, using their recollections and stories while vigorously fact checking. Like his last book, What is the What, Eggers uses a collaboration between personal narrative and journalism to tell the story. I swear to god, if Egger’s starts a new form of journalism, I’m starting an Eggers-based religion.

If that wasn’t enough, in a Salon interview that came out today, Eggers’ talks about working with students on printed media and how he has hope for the future of journalism.

The vast majority of students we work with read newspapers and books, more so than I did at their age. And I don’t see that dropping off. If anything the lack of faith comes from people our age, where we just assume that it’s dead or dying. I think we’ve given up a little too soon. We [i.e., McSweeney's] have been working every day on a prototype for a new newspaper, and a lot of what we’re doing is resurrecting old things, like things from the last century that newspapers used to do, in terms of really using the full luxury of the broadsheet newspaper, with full color and all that space.

Attempting to save journalism with young people? Dave Eggers, you the man.