Dave Eggers, the successful writer who does not want to sell on Amazon: "Spain is the most evolved society in the world"

Writer Dave Eggers poses exclusively for ICON.Elisa S. Fernández

Dave Eggers (Boston, 52 years old) writes on a boat.

"It's a boat no bigger than this table," he explains in a hotel in Madrid.

“It is docked at a dock in San Francisco Bay.

I go there, I sit down with my computer, which is 20 years old and has never been connected to the internet, and I write”, he explains.

He has been doing it since he had to put the internet at home due to the pandemic.

“I have two children and they had to teach and do homework

.

You can't imagine how much a house changes once you do it."

She has arrived with her 16-year-old daughter.

She is staying in town for a Spanish camp.

He comes to promote her new book,

(Random House), second part of

(2013).

The first novel told the terrifying story of an idealistic worker at El Círculo, an imaginary combination company of Facebook, Google and Apple.

El Todo is the name of The Circle after absorbing Amazon and is the largest and most powerful company in the world.

Also the most sinister and the most controlling.

In the book, a woman in her twenties infiltrates her to try to destroy her from within.

To say that Eggers hates the internet would be false.

To give an example: his publisher, McSweeney's, has a website.

What he hates is what he calls "network perversity."

The fact that we spend 24 hours a day connected or that large corporations know our every step.

“In the United States we try not to sell

on Amazon and it is very difficult, because they are everywhere.

They are like an octopus: printing, distribution, metadata... everything is controlled by Amazon.

So to avoid them you have to be like a mouse in a maze.

And it's really complicated.

In the end we managed to sell it through a thousand small bookstores in the US But with that, at most, you make half the money that you make selling your soul.

That kind of choice, of the daily sacrifices that would have to be made to avoid being controlled, is what

is really about .

“I think it would be possible for Amazon to merge with Facebook and Apple and people would be happy.

It is so easy to give up a small part of your freedom.

Giving up control for comfort... And what I'm wondering is: would anyone care?

Would anyone fight?

Would anyone resist convergence?

He considers himself part of that active resistance: he doesn't have a

, for example.

“He is not democratic, he is not egalitarian and it is not moral to need a $2,000 device to participate in public life.

And in the US it is very difficult to live in an analog way.

I'm a dinosaur.

To go, I don't know, to a baseball game, they want you to have the ticket on your mobile.

And if they want it, they get it.

If you go with the paper one they don't know what to do.

At least once a week I have a difficult time because I don't have a

", Explain.

His dream would be a refoundation of the internet.

“Make it more ethical.

I know my books aren't optimistic, but that's because I want to scare people into action.

In my personal life, I am optimistic.

I think there is an opportunity.

You just need people to choose it."

Dave Eggers poses exclusively for ICON.Elisa S. Fernández

When Eggers began publishing in 2000, he was included in the new generation of postmodern Anglo-Saxon literature.

That school that was not known if it was revolutionary or simply playful and impressive, led by David Foster Wallace, and in which practically everything fit, from Chuck Palahniuk to Zadie Smith, through Jennifer Egan, Michael Chabon or Jonathan Lethem.

He started with what is still the most praised of his books,

story (2001), an autobiographical story in which he tells how, after the death of his parents, he has to take care of his little brother, and which was a Pulitzer finalist and best book of the year for

,

magazine

.

Later they would come

(2002), his first fiction novel, of which he published three different versions with different titles and narrators and

(2006), a book denounces in the form of a fictionalized biography of Valentino Achack , an anonymous Sudanese victim of the civil wars in his country.

Written in the first person, it was a minor social and publishing phenomenon at a time when Eggers was being talked about as the most influential young writer in his country.

He was also the editor of two literary magazines,

and

, which managed to attract attention in a country with more than a hundred first-rate literary publications.

It seems that later it stopped being so fashionable.

But he continued to be a successful writer, with books like

(2009),

(2012) or

.

Over time, Eggers' style has become increasingly traditional.

There are no formal affairs, but he maintains his fine humor.

“The absurd and the comic have to be there, even if there is darkness.

My favorite books, from

to

, have a comic surface and the horror just below it.

It is the best combination, because this is the world and this is everyday life in the US: horror and beauty are together at all times.

It is a beautiful place, a great place in many ways.

But we are a barbaric society.

We came to Spain because it is the most evolved society in the world”.

In 2019 he lived in the Canary Islands with his family for a few months —"trying to get away from Trump for a while"— and now he adds: "Believe me, there is no violence here, democracy is very calm, even with parties like Vox.

There are people like that everywhere, but everyday life is saner and more civilized.

It was a great relief.

People asked me on the way back: 'How has it been being in Spain?'

Well, here everything was rational, while in the US they are not fully evolved.

On the scale of social evolution, the US is below France and above all is Spain”.

From inside you don't perceive the same thing, I tell him.

Here it gives the impression that we are an imperfect democracy.

“Well, I say it all the time: This is not the US There, right now, we are not evolving, we are going backwards.

We are becoming a Christian theocracy.

Groups that look like Christian Taliban are taking control in many cities in the country,” he replies.

Give an example to support your theory.

In May he discovered that

it had been removed from the reading lists of a high school in Rapid City, a city of 67,000 people in South Dakota.

It was one of five books—four novels and a memoir—that were deemed inappropriate for high school seniors.

So he decided to go to see how it was possible.

“When I went there I found out that a group of Christian fundamentalists had taken over the school board, that was the reason.

And they had banned the book for two pages of sex. Two pages!

All of those books had been banned because they had a few passages that talked about sex.

It turned out that the entire board was people from the church.

None of them had children studying there.

Not one.

But they want to control the cultural conversation by controlling the school board and saying, 'These books are not acceptable.'

You can't talk about LGTBI issues.

You can't talk about local politics.

You can't talk about the legacy of slavery.

We are going to have a white Christian narrative.

And this is happening all over the country.

More books are now banned than ever.

thousand a year throughout the country.

But I think there is a solution.

I think we can get out of this.

We've gotten rid of Trump, who started this whole thing and woke us all up."

There is speculation that

could become a series for HBO with a script by Rachel Axler, who has worked on

,

or

.

So far, only two of Eggers' novels have made it to the screen,

(2016) and

(2017).

In both, the male lead is Tom Hanks.

“It's no coincidence, he was making

in Morocco when he read

.

I was visiting the set for two days and we talked about it.

It has a production company that financed both, at least in part.

Hanks is very easy to work with.”

Less sinister.

“Well, I think the ending was dark.

Although not as much as the one in the book, it is true”, the writer stirs.

“Actually, I try not to get too involved in movies.

It takes two years and I've already spent another two writing and promoting the book.

Four years with the same story is too long.

The film is his and I go to the shoot for a day or two.

That is all.

I can only say that they tried many and none of them worked.

What seems very strange to me about making a film is that you can put all of yourself into it and people enjoy making it, but then you see the result and it's not good.

you never know

It's so hard to make a good movie.

Much more than we think.

I prefer to have a quiet life.

Quiet except when he gets involved in skits like the one in

.

“A few years ago we sold it to the University of Nevada.

She was taken by an NGO linked to the University.

And in the pandemic there was a small scandal: a man who worked at the magazine did a Zoom naked from the waist down.

The university decided to sell the magazine to restore the good name of the institution.

And it was bought by a porn website.

It didn't make any sense.

Everybody was upset.

All the authors who have published there wrote to the owner.

We talked to him and he returned it to us.

Now we have to get it up and running again”, he says, as if it were a mammoth task.

“Let's see, it will be fun, but it hadn't belonged to us for years.

It's weird to pick up something you haven't done for so long.

Actually, what I like is getting up every day, spending three hours reading and going to write on my boat, surrounded by birds,

fishermen and sea lions.

And maybe fall asleep for a while.”

If you spend that much time in the boat you should perhaps consider getting a bigger one.

“No, no, this one is the perfect size.

There is only one person."

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