Wild Card with Rachel Martin - Dave Eggers

Episode Date: June 11, 2026

Dave Eggers isn’t about rushing creativity. His latest novel, "Contrapposto," has been on his mind for about two decades. And he tells Rachel he believes many artists do their best work in their 80s and 90s. Eggers also reflects on how he’s learned to slow down in middle age, what he sees as the greatest danger of AI, and shares a moment of appreciation he felt watching an apricot tree.To listen sponsor-free and support the show, sign up for Wild Card+ at plus.npr.org/wildcard See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

What is something you want younger generations to understand? This is the first time in history when a whole generation is being told or tempted to have a machine right for them. But I say, like, you are one of one. Unprecedented in history of human evolution. There's only one of you. So to give your voice to a machine to say, speak for me, I'm going to be silent. It's such a crime against yourself. I'm Rachel Martin, and this is Wildcard, the show.

Show where cards control the conversation. Each week, my guest answers questions about their life. Questions pulled from a deck of cards. They're allowed to skip one question and to flip one question back on me. My guest this week is author Dave Eggers. Even your roughest dress, even your most disjointed seeming thoughts are going to be valid, and your voice is essential. The human chorus is incomplete without your voice.

He was thrust into the public eye in the year 2000, He published his award-winning memoir, a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. He went on to become one of the most successful writers in his generation. He is also a visual artist, and his newest book is an epic story about friendship, art, and the compromises necessary for both. It's called Contra Posto, and I'm so very happy to welcome Dave Eggers to Wildcard. Hi. Hey, thanks for having me.

Round one, memories, first three cards you choose one, two, or three. three. Three. Three. Where would you go to feel safe as a kid? Oh, geez. I will say, just because we're talking about art, in high school, it was the art room with Mr. Hortness, our art teacher. I was a very awkward freshman and sophomore, covered in zits, not at all comfortable in my body and very unsure about everything. And but he, I loved the art classes I took and then Hort, we called him Hort for short. I have never done that before. Terrible rhyme.

But Hort gave me like a corner of this art room to just set up and it was not an orthodox thing. I just had a little corner and I had my own paint and canvases and could be there any period of the day. Lunch, you know, whenever I just wanted to be somewhere alone and. have a safe space, I guess. And so I don't, you know, I look back and think about that. That was pretty radical, actually, to give me a corner, a permanent corner of a room. Either he thought you were exceptionally talented or that you just kind of needed a safe space? I, you know, I'd always drawn since I was really young. And so, yeah, he was really encouraging.

And I took to oil painting kind of early. And yeah, and then I think that, you know, teachers see things that very few other people or adults don't always see. Teachers see very quickly what this person needs, what that kid needs, you know, and especially if, you know, if you see a kid enter a space like we do at 826 Valencian, and you know that they belong there and that this is really their haven, then you have to carve out space for them. Yeah, we should just say 826 Valencia is this wonderful nonprofit that's become national where you're encouraging kids writing in the arts and and doing a lot of mentorship. What can you describe the feeling in that place?

It's the smells first because it's turpentine and oil paint and chalk and charcoal and glue. And so it's really, this was, were a lot of windows too that opened, thank God. Because the art school realm is all about the smells first. But even before what you see, before the paintings, before the drawings, before anything, the smell assaults you. But you get, for all of us that came up through art school, like that's our comfort smell. You know, like it's this incredibly pungent, super toxic mix of things that, you know,

after a while, I guess I used. I mean, who knows what nerve damage it did to all of us. Were you writing simultaneously? I mean, when did writing become more of the artistic centerpiece for you? It was those two things always for me. So from first grade on, when I had a teacher named Mrs. Wright that had us write a book, write and illustrate a book, that was, it was, you know, I drew all the pictures, we bound the book with yarn, you know, I still have this book today. It was always the two things together that I couldn't really do one without the other, and they balanced each other in a way. And so I don't think I've ever really had a period of time when I wasn't doing writing. and drawing in some way. You need the physicality to trigger your imagination?

I mean, do you physically need one for the other? Like, you can't. It feels like I do, you know? I feel like I have to get out of my brain, and drawing really does. It's like you're not really thinking much. The choices are very sort of just physiological that you're making.

So it's like, it's a whole different kind of process than the sort of like hyper, you know, brain-driven writing that you have to do well So after, I used to, after especially a tough day writing or writing about tough subject matter, where as a journalist, I would spend the later part of the night just drawing on the floor for hours to just kind of cleanse my brain, I guess. Yeah, I get that. Next three.

I'll go with one. Yeah. What's an experience from childhood when you realized your parents were only human? Oh, boy. Well, I had a My mom was She was like the gentlest person But also tough as nails

And so I just remember always like being in the kitchen When she was cutting things or cooking And she would cut You know straight halfway through a finger Or burn herself And just you know Barely acknowledge it Like you know

There's like that old Dan Macroid skit on SNL where he's playing Julia Child and the blood is going everywhere. Yes, yes. Yeah, and I sort of remember it being like almost that extreme. And she would just sort of wrap it up and, you know, paper towel and move on. And so she was like... That doesn't sound very human at all. That sounds superhuman.

Yeah, I mean, but, you know, I think that it was that sort of sense that she could be, you know, she bled like any other human. But just kind of moving on with it. was never any, you know, there was really very little acknowledgement of pain or wounds or hospital. I mean, none of that stuff. I mean, it was... Was that a general skepticism of like... No, not at all. I think it was just like I didn't miss a day of school till college either. You know, that was the era where unless you were maimed or like really like, you know, not breathing, we went to school, you know? It's just Chicago in the 70s and 80s. There were, you know, no days off. There was no, you know, acknowledgement of human frailty, which I'm kind of for. I sort of

think, like, that's the way to do it. It's just like you go to school, you get your perfect attendance record, you honor the teachers that are trying to, you know, convey something to you on a steady basis and you show up. Yeah. How about your dad? Same question? Yeah. Did he, did he, Did he show a lot of human frailty? Did you put him on a pedestal to the point where it was helpful to see him be human? I mean, well, he was quite human. And I, that's a good question. Yeah, it was not a kind of a thing where anyone was on a pedestal.

I don't even know if there were pedestals in the 70s. It just felt like we all were like, you know, we were very, you know, we've just all spent most of our time in one room in the living room. And that's when you did your TV, you did your homework on the shag rug in front of the television that was playing Rockford Files or Morg and Mindy. And everybody was in the same room and everyone was smoking. And it was just like this really incredibly pungent, rich. sort of human malange. And so there was never any illusion that we weren't all human, I think, that we were so human. There's a great Saul Bello quote where he needs to periodically take a humanity bath

when he feels like he's too in his head or too divorced from the world around him. He has to go out in the city, especially Chicago where he was from and take a humanity bath. Yeah. I use that phrase a lot. Okay, last one in this time. One, two, or three? I'll try two this time. Two.

When's the time you realized you were on the right path? So I've been going through old papers lately, and I was always encouraged by art teachers and my English teachers. But when I was a junior in high school, and I found this paper last week, I've been looking for it forever. And it was a little different than I thought, but my junior year English teacher, Mr. Christ, who had like the, you know, the platonic ideal of the English teacher with the patches on the sleeve. The corduroy jacket with the leather patches and the glasses and the salt and pepper hair and the gray mustache and he knew everything. And he was teaching us, you know, Macbeth. And I used to bring to school every day a copy of Ase Lay Dying by Faulkner to see. if he would notice that I was reading off the list, you know?

You wanted to be acknowledged as like an Uber reader, intellectual guy. I did not understand a word of this book, not one sentence, but I brought it every day thinking he might notice. But I wrote a paper about Macbeth, and he wrote at the bottom, you know, sure hope you become a writer and some other things. But to me, you know, we didn't have any writers in my family or anyone we knew. or anyone we knew who knew anyone. There was no tie to that as a life.

So I'd never heard the word writer as an option. Right. Yeah. And so it's one of those things where a teacher tells you that, somebody that you respect that much and knows that much. Even, you know, it was probably 11 years after that when I was like really living as a writer. But in those 11 years with whatever kind of discrefer,

urge men or hurdles I had or whatever, or anybody that said you should not be a writer, which definitely happened a few times. I always had that in my back pocket, that Mr. Kreisch, who I thought knew everything. I do believe he said this was an option for me. Before we start round two, let's step out of the game and talk about your new book. It is called contraposto. I mean, we were speaking earlier about how you have needed the visual arts. it's painting and drawing in tandem to writing as long as you can remember.

But is this the first book that you have written that marries the two? Yeah. It's been on my mind for probably 20 years. And I can't believe it took this long for it to come together. It doesn't make any sense because it's been, you know, these are themes that I care a lot about. And so, you know, now that I'm in my mid-30s, it feels really weird. It took like, I feel like I'm almost too old to talk about these themes. But, yeah, it was a long time coming.

Sometimes these books gestate for a long, long time. So I've been taking notes for forever. I mean, really 20 years about who these characters would be in sort of their lives. There's two cricket and Olympia, these friends from childhood, and they sort of weave in and out of the art world and weave in and out of each other's, lives for 68 years, I think. Yeah, I'm trying to do this math. I keep getting it a little one. Yeah, but it starts when they're eight and ends when they're 74. That's lovely. It's a beautiful look, like I said, of friendship and creative pursuits.

I looked up contraposto because it actually does mean it's a kind of, it's a way to pose, right? The word itself. Yeah, if you look at like the most famous. The famous example is Michelangelo's David is like a classic example of a contraposto pose, which is sort of imbalanced. The weight is on one leg. Maybe your hips are going one way and your shoulders are going another way. It doesn't look comfortable. Let's be clear.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but it's like a sort of a balanced imbalance, let's say. Yeah. So instead of having a stock still kind of, you know, rigid pose, which would, you know, had preceded the contrapostal pose, suddenly artists started using this, especially in sculpture, because it was more interesting. And you'd have a twist of the hips and a twist of the shoulders,

and you'd have infinitely more interesting. And I think more truthful kind of human poses at that point. So I love the word. You learn it in art school. And definitely whenever you do life drawing, like drawing from a live model, everything is contraposto, you know. That's so and I think it accurately kind of adheres to cricket and Olympia because they're imbalanced but sort of balanced together sort of entwined and and and you know they can't ever be

well they do come apart a lot but together there's like this weird awkward balance between them let's say there are a lot of scenes in the book of people posing of of of artists, either cricket or other of his peers, drawing or painting live models, is that, and you're very specific about writing what that experience is like, both being the artist, sort of the voyeur, in this very intimate dynamic, and being the person who was gazed upon. And I just found those to be such interesting scenes. Right. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, I started doing life drawing as a kid, like at 14, I guess, go down to Chicago and take classes. So that cricket has that same experience. There's a few things that are borrowed from my own childhood. But life drawing is so startling. Like you get your all your material ready and your charcoal and your paper and everything. And then just a stranger walks in, drawing.

drops a robe and it could be somebody who's you might be a teenager and the model is a 72 year old woman or a 58 year old man and and it's so intimate but so I mean for two minutes you're shocked by the nudity in front of you and then it becomes a body and then it becomes a task you know to sort of get it right and then there then it goes into some other mode where you're just kind of like awakened to like the incredible beauty of the human form at any age, you know? Yeah. I remember being young when, and you think, oh, somebody in their 50s is going to be some like prune like wrinkled, decrepit, whatever, you know, a shell of a human.

And then this vibrant, a human is in front of you and his skin is a glow and he's confident and strong and doing all of these interesting poses. is you, it becomes really affirming, I think, and you get to, there's an intimacy and a wisdom that comes from that, that I would recommend everybody take a life-drawn class, like tomorrow. So my take on the art world after reading your book is that it's not a very nice place. You can disagree. You can reject that impression, but it just, the story is about, it just, it just, you know, seemingly all this judgment, you're continuously just putting your soul on a canvas and and awaiting

judgment from other people who will deem whether or not this is a thing that you can then commercialize and thereby be a successful artist who can feed yourself or not. And that just seems awful. In visual art especially, well, in any art form, it really should be, if you've chosen to do that, you have made a choice to be or ostensibly be among joyful, anarchic, you know, rule-breaking, happy gestures, let's say, you know? And then sometimes when a mean or competitive or cruel element enters that healthy environment, it's so strange. And so there's a moment or two where cricket gets exposed to like the nasty side or the competitive or the cannibalistic side of the art world where a bunch of people are kind of clawing on top of each other to get to some other place.

And that never made sense to me. their art to make something that they can make money off of. Yeah, it's, I never understood that part of it because, and I do always, whenever I advise, like, you know, young people going into that field, I said, you know, if you ever find yourself in an MFA program or anywhere where it's competitive and it feels like cutthroat, then you have to flee because there's no good can come from that. And I love the communities of artists that come up together sort of supporting each other, right? So groups of artists, like the Impressionists, for example, I was always obsessed with this, the way that, you know, seven or eight main Impressionists, they were part of all of the shows.

They put on their own shows apart from the salon system, and they were always there for each other. So if, like, Morris So has a show, de Gaas, everybody else shows up for her. And we've heard of all of these Impressionists because, they stuck together and because they lifted each other up. But had they all been competitive with each other, we only one or two of those folks would have survived. So this sort of idea of getting yourself in a community, of supportive, but also challenging each other's sort of artists is so key. I always tell any groups of young people in college or high school, like, these are your people. This is your tribe. Like, support each other. If you think anyone

in this room is your competitor, then you are grossly mistaken. You've been completely misinformed. These are your allies. These are your, you know, these is your, these are your champions, these are your peers, and you're only going to make it if you come up together, if you support each other. And so the sooner you learn that, and if you can live that, then it can be a really joyful life. And so, but you do have to really get as far away as possible from any sort of atmosphere where it's otherwise, where if your success means my failure, that kind of idea, that zero-sum idea that you do find all over the place, especially sometimes in, you know, college environments, let's say. And, but it really, if you're not doing it and you're not enjoying it,

You might as well do something else. Dig ditches. Like do something else if you're not going to enjoy something that's so harmless and inherently, you know, that the entire point of doing it is beauty and joy and and, you know, taking and giving the pleasures of the world. Round two, Dave Eggers. Insights. One, two or three? Three.

Three. Do you take life as it comes, or do you plan for all outcomes? Can't you do both, you know? Like, I always feel like sometimes these dichotomies are... They're good for the cards, Dave. I guess so. But you are not naturally one or the other. Well, I have a to-do list that I write every couple days, so there's like a planning involved there.

right? Great. But like I think as an example when I travel, my preferred way of travel is like a plane ticket to a place but not even I don't know where I'm staying that night. So that's. Oh, that is way too loosey-ducy for me. And that's how I traveled for years and years. And I would just sort of walk until I found a place to stay and then I'd stay there.

And that's not the way you travel with your family. Right. Don't you have kids? Yeah. So when the four of us and my wife. wife Vandala, who's a novelist too. We work differently and also plan differently. She's very much about it. She makes sure there is lodging. Yeah, she's a responsible human being. And so it's a little bit different to travel with your kids that way. But even though, even so, you can allow for, like I went to

Indonesia with my son about six months ago. We had a little bit of a plan. We wanted to see the Komoto dragons, which, of course, you want to see the Komodo dragons before you die. And our plan was upended for a lot of reasons, but so we just, we kind of made up the day every time and just kind of picked a place on the map and then rode a scooter to it and hid from the monsoon rains and then get back on it and go somewhere else and then meet somebody that had an idea to go, you know. And so I think that giving yourself up to chance whenever you can, to me, that's the point of travel. It's just like the unexpected. But I don't know why I was answering your question

in the realm of travel, but it came to mind, I think... Does that apply to your actual life, though, beyond travel? Like, just letting things happen. Yeah, I'm not really good at, like, you know, like having a whole week planned. This is really, to me, I feel just trapped, you know? So to have one day planned is, I have to rest the next day. When I have like a day, it's like one thing after another. I'm like, oh, tomorrow, I just got to rest from all of that because, yeah, I don't really... Yeah, it's too much orchestration. Yeah, I get it.

Okay, one, two, or three? One. One. How much do you rely on the validation of others? It depends on who those others are. So with a book, it's going to sound like a... hard to believe. But when I send a book, show a book to Vendel of my wife, if she says it works, I'm done.

I don't seek any other people's validation. It's really honestly one reader that understands it really well is plenty. That's all. For real, come on. Especially a valued reader. When you've sent it out into the world, if no one likes it, you're like, whatever. But usually if no one likes it, then even the trusted readers haven't liked it. So it's like you lie to yourself sometimes if you release something that you know isn't its best self.

And sometimes you get a little bit impatient and you release something. Or every so often there's a book that just has a much smaller readership and it's only meant for a few. And so, and that's still as valid. But I will say that once that small group of readers or one or two says I, you know, We talk about it, and it seems like it worked on whatever I wanted to accomplish, worked for them. Then I'd tune out everything else. Like, I definitely don't need, I mean, I've never read a review. I don't need anything else.

And then the fun is meeting individual readers at like a bookstore in Rapid City, and, you know, you meet somebody there that really understood it, and you're just talking to them. It's like, that's just gravy on top of it. I wonder because it was like a title wave of affirmation and validation after your 2000 memoir, did that do more harm than good, that overwhelm of validation? Well, that book was supposed to be a very small book. The first run was 5,000 copies, I think. So nobody expected anybody to read that thing.

And so it was a surprise for sure. So sometimes you write something for a small, audience, which I did. And then unexpectedly, you have a larger audience. And so, and then, you know, you write a book like that. I figured it would be only the readers were going to be 29 like I was 29. And then you see people of all ages in front of you and you're at a bookstore and there's people in their 80s. And it was a shock. And I took me, yeah, it took me a while to adjust to that, a larger readership because I'd been in the indie magazine world and comics world and stuff. And so, But you do have to just kind of know that it's completely out of your hands.

You never know. Never know what's going to connect with a larger audience. Sometimes I felt for sure that something would be, you know. In the zeit case, yeah. Yeah, and then crickets. And so, oh, there we go, crickets. And then other times something, but I think that that's kind of the beauty of it. You can't engineer it.

You can't ever predict it. Right. Which is why you shouldn't cater to it, you know, because it's so... You can't even try. There's no point. And so all you can do is try to do the thing that you're set out to do and within the boundaries of your own goals. And then there's an alchemy that happens between a book and a reader that they interpret it or see it a different way than you might have, but they might get something out of it that you didn't have in mind.

and you can't question it, and you definitely can't ever predict or foresee it. Right to it or for it, yeah. Right. One, two or three. Oh, two. Two. What feels unreachable to you? Surfing, let's say.

I, once every couple years. Once every couple of years. I mean, I learned to surf in Mexico's water. was very warm, and I thought I was like master surfer back when I was in my 20s. I was at best, like a very, very low beginner, but to me it was just like pure heaven. And then you get older and you think you can keep doing it, and especially in the frozen waters up in San Francisco. And that's the most humbling thing that a human can experience. It's like you cannot even get past the breakers to surf.

You almost die getting 50 feet out. And you think, like, how did these? And then you'll see some 75-year-old guy with, you know, extra pounds on him. And he's just doing it. I mean, just, and so I have such respect for surfers, especially the older ones that do it so elegantly. So to me, and I, you know, I'm out and about on the waterfront, lot in San Francisco.

Like Ocean Beach? Where you go? Ocean Beach, but also like Fort Point. No, I mean, I've seen Mavericks, but yeah, good Lord. I would definitely die en route to Mavericks. That would be the end of me. But, you know, like Fort Point, there's a little surf area right under the Golden Gate Bridge. And my office is right under the bridge.

I work on a little sailboat. So I'm just sort of on the water all the time. And seeing those guys get up and avoid all of these rocks everywhere and certain death every day is very humbling. So to me, that's what immediately comes to mind as unreachable. I don't know if that's an insight. That is an insight. I think that sounds like a thing that you almost prefer to keep as unreachable. It's a nice thing to have something like that in your life.

No, I would like to be able to. I'm so jealous. I really want to be out there. Beliefs, last round. One, two, or three? One. How do you think your life should be judged? Oh, good Lord. Yeah, I know. Next. Skip. You want skip it? Yeah. Skip. Yeah. Okay, let's do this one. Are you preoccupied? I was brought up Catholic. You can't ask that question. That's just a can of worms that it's, uh, yeah, I've got no answer. We'll see if your Catholicism affects this one.

Are you preoccupied with the past, the future, or neither? Really, I, especially in my mid-30s now, like, I really have been able to enjoy the days, you know? Yeah. And especially like on a day where you don't have to be anywhere. it's Have you always had that ability? Have you always had that ability? Have you always had that?

No. No, no. I think when you're young and ambitious, you're thinking about, you know, I don't know, you're just more goal-oriented, I guess, you know? And you want to see certain things and do certain things at a certain pace. And then when you get a little older, you know, being able to, I mean, it's so corny, But like, you know, I plant fruit trees now. So to me, the present is just like seeing how my trees are doing.

And I had a peach come in the other day. And a tree I had no, I felt like this tree was dying and it was in a lot of trouble. And I was watering it and feeding it and everything. And I thought he was going to die on me. And it wasn't the right place to plant it. And then two little peaches appeared yesterday like overnight from nothing. And then they're like the size of golf balls. It's so shocking to me.

But to be in a place where you're like, I'm gardening and obsessed with fruit trees is not where I thought I would be, you know, 10 years ago. But I have no Buddhist sayings about the present or sort of philosophical kind of like organizing principles about it, but I do know that the other day my apricot tree, there was wind and I was watering it. and the wind was making its arms sway. It has like 12 arms, right? But he's swaying in this sort of weird ecstasy of the water and the wind,

and he's like accepting it all. And I was like, this is like such an intimate experience I'm having with an apricot tree. And you only do those things and you only have those really weird, surreal, beautiful moments if it's like you really, you get. got to slow down a lot, you know, to sort of allow for that. And so as I've gotten older, I've gotten a lot slower, just about everything. And so, you know, my days are quite, quite slow and quite quiet, let's say, for the most part. So I guess that's about the present. That's a beautiful answer. I'm not going to say being in the present or anything.

I know. We're never saying that. That's a pack need cliche. We're never saying. But. I do like the idea. We know what it means. We know. And I like the idea of you dancing in ecstasy with an apricot tree. That's a lovely image. Well, I wasn't doing any dancing. Come on, let's not go that far.

No, I mean. The apricot tree, I would never, myself, dance with an apricot tree. But watching an apricot tree. Let's check back and sit in 10 years. I know. See where you are. Okay, three new cards, one, two, or three? Three.

Three. How often do you think about death? Oh, God. I didn't realize somehow I missed how heavy these questions were on your show. Boy, boy. I mean, I don't very often. I think I used to a lot more. So it doesn't occur to me. I used to, like, again, like while surfing or doing anything, always picturing the 12 different ways. one could die in that situation, but it would just come and go. It wasn't like I was neurotic about it, but it would just be a series of kind of presentations. Like, well, this could happen and, you know, this has happened before. Also, we have to say, your parents died when you were only like 20 or 21, so death had to have been on the brain for a long time.

Yeah, so, but these days, no, I, you know, I'm older than they were when they passed. now and somehow dodged any kind of major diseases so far. And so you do find yourself getting free of those, the burden of feeling like, okay, there's something about the bloodline that is, you know, frail. And so, but you live differently and you live a, you know, drastically different life. And so here we are, you know, in my... mid-30s. And so it's really, it's so funny, I use that, I say things like that in front of kids, and they have no idea. They're like, what? I could be 35 or 70. They don't know. There's just no,

I don't know, you're old. I mean, you're older than 18 after everybody after 18 is the same kind of category of old and decrepit. But yeah, I, so not so much. Not so much. Yeah. No. Yeah. I do. I've said this a lot, but my parents died.

My mom was 60. My dad died at 74 just a couple years ago. And for my mom in particular, I'm always doing the death math, right? Like, oh, if I get to 60, awesome. I got like eight years left. Basically, I'll die then. And if I don't die then, it's all gravy. It's all extra life that I didn't expect to have.

And I don't know if that's healthy or not. No, you got to. I'm always looking for the people that are 93 and doing great work still or out and about or musicians that are, you know, doing their best work in their 80s. And I do know so many. I collect these people all the time, you know. Well, like Paul Simon's last album, I think, is one of his two or three best albums ever, seven Psalms.

And I think he was 82 and he made it. And so I'm always thinking of people that are sort of doing. their best work and touring the world and all that stuff, I think it's inevitable when you want to look ahead and you still feel youthful and not on the, you know, not any weaker, you know, than you were at any other point. I don't feel at all any less strength than I did at 25 or 30. So, but those folks, and we're in such an incredible moment

where there are so many artists and writers, working, doing their best work. And it would make perfect sense that they would do their best work. Right. At 70, 80. They've seen so much their human libraries. They have this wealth of experience. Of course, if they can sublimate it and make great art out of it, of course, that would be, you know, of course they would have so much to say.

And it's just a matter of like knowing that, you know, you should and that it's not. It's, it's, uh, your, your work is still valid or if not, uh, the most valid at that age. And you see it a lot in the visual arts world, um, you know, whether it was like Yeo Kusama or Ruth Asawa or, you know, you see so many artists, Faith Ringgold, like all of these artists that were really rediscovered or, uh, um, celebrated when they were, when they were older and their whole work was, uh, you know, re-examined or, or, uh, um, um, celebrated when they were, um, um, um, um, um, um, um, when they were, or re-shown all over the world, like, of course, those people have the most to say. And of course, those retrospectives are the most dramatic and the most sort of, like, affirming.

And I'd love it when they will have this career retrospective, but their new work is still just as bold and radical and weird as their stuff when they were 25. And usually better because they've, you know, polished a few things. Wisdom in the Weirdness, yeah. Wisdom in the Weirdness. There you go. title of your book. You can use that. Okay. Last one. One, two, or three?

Three. Three. What is something you want younger generations to understand? Well, I'll go on my AI rant because I do this once a week with students. I was at a high school class the other day. And when a teacher asked me like last words, I'm always like, well, listen, we're in this era where all of the, of these, my kids are 17 and 20. I'm in high schools all the time. They're more tempted, and this is the first time in history when a whole generation is being told or tempted to have a machine right for them, to express themselves. But I say, like, you are one of one, unprecedented in the history of human evolution. There's only one of you, if your name is

Asher, you know. So Asher, there's never been you. There's never been you ever, and there never will be another one of you. So to give your voice to a machine, to say, speak for me, I'm going to be silent and I'm going to tell a machine to express myself or to tell my narrative. It's such a crime against yourself. It's so dystopian beyond anything I could do in a dystopian novel, and I did a lot. I never saw this coming. Would be an entire generation tempted and too many of them acquiescing to the silencing of their own voice. in favor of a bland unthinking machine to voice their souls.

I mean, what dystopian novelist would ever do think that this was possible. But if you can tell them, even your roughest dress, even your most disjointed seeming thoughts are going to be valid. And your voice is essential. The human chorus is incomplete without your voice. and I'm going to listen to whatever you say, even the rough drafts, whatever, I want those, I want to see it all, then we can make sure that they're heard and that they feel like there are humans out there that want to hear that voice and not the machine-processed voice. So that's my advice. Good Lord, we're at a really scary time, you know.

But every adult has to be that person, every teacher, every parent has to be the ones. saying, do not do this. Your voice is the only thing that you have naturally. It's the one thing that nobody can replace. And so let's hear your truth, even if it's raw, even if it's unpolished, even if it doesn't come in the five-paragraph essay or whatever. Like, let's have it straight from you. So I love it when they handwrite in class, which a lot of teachers are having their students do right now. And I love it when anything that takes them away from processing it through or giving your

voice to a machine. Dave Eggers, we end the show the same way every time with a trip in our memory time machine. Okay. In the memory time machine, you revisit one moment from your past. It's not a moment you want to change anything about. But it is a moment you you'd like to linger in a little longer. And ideally, it's something you'd like to share. What memory do you choose?

Any time when I'm with my family, with my wife and kids, like my daughter just got back from college. She just got back from college? Yeah, just for the summer. And that first moment when we're all four together again is just like I would linger for centuries in that moment, just sitting around the table. and talking.

And talking about her flight, it doesn't matter. So, I mean, it's a, I don't, it's not a super, unusual answer, I guess, but to me, you get to really appreciate it, like, wow, okay, there's something in the chemistry of the four people that is just like, you know, unimprovable. no matter what we're doing or what we're talking about, that's sort of, it's like a, the most perfect jazz quartet of all time when like every, you know, you need all four of the musicians to be there together, but without any of them, it's fine, but not as good.

Kitchen table? Kitchen table, fresh fruit. A long time ago, I designed a sort of, sort of, of an amoeba shaped table where you could, and we had a friend make it at a butcher block and it's got a steel base. And I wanted something that you could fit like eight people around with like, you know, kind of undulating shape. And I'm not, I don't really love right angles and hard angles all the time and everything

minimalist and severe. So I love curves and I love. organic shapes and so we designed this shape and we've just been sort of we all have our parts of the table do you each have your own like inlet of the table mm-hmm 20 years now or however long it's been yeah so i'm sure that there's like human residue on each one of our inlets you know where our tummies have been pressed against all that time and you know and then there's like fresh lemons always in the front from the lemon tree that produces far more more fruit than any human could ever conceive.

I don't know why it has so much fruit, but we always have 50 lemons on the table because the harvest never ends. That's lovely. Yeah. That's lovely. I hope your kids keep coming home. Give them fresh fruit and taste them. Dave Eggers, it's been such a pleasure.

You can read Dave's new book. It is called Contraposto. It has just been so fun to do this. Thank you. Thanks a lot, Rachel. Good to see you. If you'd like this episode, check out my conversation with George Saunders. George was equally reflective about his own path as a writer and what he has built through hard work and what he's still reaching for. This episode was produced by Searing Vista and Summer Tomah.

It was edited by Dave Blanchard and mastered by Josephine Nio-Ni. Wildcard's executive producer is Yolana Singh-Win, and our theme music is by Romteen Arableu. You can reach out to us at Wildcard at npr.org. We're going to shuffle the deck and be back with more next week. Talk to you then.