Part of the problem I have with Eggers (and, to a lesser extent, Michael Chabon), is that their writing is, by nature, disenfranchising. Eggers (and again, Chabon) doesn't have the ability to deal with strong female characters, so he simply writes them out or renders them inept or helpless. The only reason Beth is memorable at all in AHWoSG is because of what happened to her after the last word was written. Other than that, most of the women Eggers presents in his works are simply personifications of desire or pain or sexuality, rather than entites themselves. Similarly, the most interesting woman in Kavalier and Clay is ultimately sidelined from her artistic independence by the promise of a powerful man to sweep her off her feet. It's that underlying subtle chauvenism that seems to be making a comeback in modern literature, thanks to too many damn readers who grew up on Salinger and Hemingway, that bothers me. As if it were impossible to be a truly strong male character without it.
More than that though, and this is where Chabon succeeds while Eggers fails, is, frankly, he's a good writer but a mediocre storyteller. His writing suffers from weak plotlines, which he tries to make up for with self-referential verbal masturbation. But there's just a bit too much of him patting himself on the back for being oh-so-clever-and-ironic for my taste. If I want that, I'll read Evelyn Waugh.
