Pang 1

Yahui Pang

Justine Yan

Writing 39B

25 October 2017

Dave Eggers Realization of Reality

In Dave Eggers travel writing The Actual Hollister, he visits the town Hollister and

writes down the stories happen between him and this town. He decides to visit there because he

has been seeing the clothing brand Hollister around for a long time. He wonders if there is any

connections between the brand and the town, or, he simply assumes that there must be some kind

of connections between them - for example, maybe the brand is named after this town. However,

after he goes there, he not only finds out the brand has nothing to do with the town, but also

discovers other facts about the town that are different from his expectations. This discovery he

has reveals the theme of this essay, which is the realization of difference between expectations

and reality. Dave Eggers writes his essay in a unique way where he puts down himself with the

readers and make the readers feel that they are taking the tour with him. By sharing the journey

with the audience, he builds up his credibility and achieves his goal of motivating and leading

the readers to realize the reality and finally reforms the readers idea about California and the

town Hollister.

Dave Eggers is very careful with how he builds up his relationship with his readers. He

firstly chooses an unconventional way to start his essay that is to begin with describing himself
 Pang 2

as a normal man as his readers are. The year I turned forty-three, I woke up one morning and

thought it would be a good day to go to Hollister. Id seen those hoodies around, and the place

had been on my mind No one was expecting me and I wasnt expecting anything. It was the

kind of trio a middle-aged man takes when his children are at a trampoline birthday

party(Eggers 1). He uses a tone and conventions of travel writing that is described by Neil

Whitehead as drive to narrativity(1997:63) because he talks about his thoughts and

expectations rather than just plain account of his trip. He defines this trip as a normal trip and

claim that it is even not a planned trip. All of these settings gives the readers a sense of relaxing

and adventurous - you never know what happens next since there is no plan. He puts himself

down to the same level with his readers so they can share this journey. Now his readers are

aligned with him because they assume Dave Eggers has the similar background with them and

therefore his work is trustworthy to read.

Building trust between the readers and the author is very important in travel writing

because the special trait of this genre makes the authors not trusted by the readers, at least not as

much as other writing genres do. Especially in this essay where Dave Eggers observations are

mostly framed by first-person narrative, it is easy to make his readers think its too subjective to

give credit to. Therefore, using third-person narrative is another strategy Dave Eggers uses in

some parts of this essay to gain credits. The real story of Hollister begins in Marion County,

twenty miles from Mark Twains home town of Hannibal, in 1836. This is when T.S. Hawkins

was born, the eldest of nine children To some extent, Hawkins blamed his granddaughters
 Pang 3

death on the lack of proper health care in rural Hollister, so he threw himself into the

construction of a solution and a monument. He named it the Hazel Hawkins Memorial

Hospital(Eggers 4). By telling the history in third-person narrative, Dave Eggers conveys

authority and obtains credit from the reader(Thompson 84). Dave Eggers also switches

naturally between his diary and his notebook(Thompson 86) to gain his credibility. That is,

talking about his own thoughts and feelings throughout the account but also writes about enough

amount of his discoveries. By doing this, he makes his writing both personal and scientific and

also reliable by the reader.

Dave Eggers also uses his unique identity to gain further authority by revealing it at the

right moment. He has a significant identity of being a great-great-grandson of one of the town

founders. It is a piece of helpful background information about him because it can make him an

insider in his reader's eyes, however, it could also easily break the trust between him and the

readers. If he did not lower himself down at the beginning and hid his true identity from the

reader at first, the reader would think his work is not worth to read because the relationship he

has with this town. Dave Eggers smartly hides it from his readers at the beginning but reveals it

later in the passage where it booms the credits he obtains. It was the kind of trip a middle-aged

man takes when his children are at a trampoline party. (Eggers 1) He states in the first

paragraph that this is just a trip that any middle-aged man would take, which shows his persona

in this essay of just a normal middle-aged man. This setting of persona successfully pulls him

and his readers closer. Then he reveals his identity to explain why the rise of the brand Hollister
 Pang 4

is strange to him. The rise of the Hollister brand has been really strange to me, because it was

my great-great-grandfather T.S.Hawkins who helped found the town of Hollister. After he

reveals his true identity he provides background information for the readers that is authoritative

to his readers because of his identity. Dave Eggers strategy of hiding his true identity from his

readers at the beginning is not a conventional strategy of travel writing, since travel writing

authors usually choose to identify their identities in the beginning to gain most credits. However,

Dave Eggers strategy is very effective in his case by making himself both an outsider and an

insider.

The structure of this essay is thoughtfully chose by Dave Eggers too. Overall, it is a linear

time line with all the events happen during this trip. However, there are few times where the time

jumps back into history. For example, In 2006, a Hollister merchant out Rag City Blues:

Hollister on vintage blue jeans and decided to file a federal trademark application for her

label...but they were told that the companys aspirational brand would not find the right audience

in Hollister(Eggers, 2). In this passage, Dave Eggers jumps back into history and offers a story

about the Hollister store, which serves as background information for the reader to learn more

about this towns history. There are a few more examples such like this throughout the passage,

which to my opinion are not useless information, instead, they help the town appear more vividly

in front of the audience. Also, the linear timeline Dave Eggers uses to construct this essay is very

effective since this essay concludes many small stories. If the timeline is not linear, the reader
 Pang 5

would get confused by the time period and find it is really hard to follow the author. By

arranging the stories by time also engages the audience better in the stories.

During his journey in Hollister, Dave Eggers realizes the difference between his

expectations, or assumptions, and reality. When he goes to visit the hospital, he assumes it is still

there like years ago, however, it is abandoned and there is only a barbershop left at the corner.

He goes into the shop and wants to get a haircut and meets the tattooed guy there. He does not

assume a tattooed guy would be caring and loving, however, it turns out the opposite way.

Examples that show contrasts between his assumptions and the facts are numerous in this article.

However, the most significant one is that he assumes the town would have some connections to

the brand Hollister, as I mentioned in the beginning, the store Hollister is one of Dave Eggers

motivations to come and visit this town. Unfortunately, it turns out that there is no connection

between the brand and the town. The store does not even want to be related to this town because

the company thinks the town is not good enough. There is not one Hollister store in Hollister,

which is really ridiculous.

Through these stories that contrast expectations and reality, Dave Eggers goes through a

realization. Furthermore, he wants his readers to reach such a realization about the town of

Hollister and even the state of California. There are those who think California is a state where

Spanish speakers should have natural sway. And there are those who think that this is a state

where English speakers have preminence, and there are those, who insist that if we have any

sense of history, of decency, the native people of California should be given the first seat at the
 Pang 6

table. He states that different people have different opinions about California, people should be

open about it and maybe come and see another aspect of California where is not so bright but

with full culture and history.

Dave Eggers revisits the town of Hollister and finds places that are different from his

expectations. He writes The Actual Hollister to show his readers what he experienced in that

town and gives his readers a new sense of the town of Hollister, the brand of Hollister and even

the state of California. The reason that he could successfully do this is because the strategy that

he adopts of revealing his true identity at the right moment allows him to gain credibility.

Bibliography:

1. Thompson, Carl. Travel Writing. London: Routledge, 2011 Print.

2. Eggers, Dave. The Actual Hollister. New York:The New Yorker, July 20, 2015 Issued.

3. Whitehead, Neil (ed.) (1997), The Discoverie of the Large, Rich and Bewtiful Empyre of

Guiana, by Sir Walter Ralegh, Manchester: Manchester University Press.

4. Nixon, Rob (1992), London Calling: V.S. Naipaul, Postcolonial Mandarin, Oxford:

Oxford University Press.

Pang 7