Pursuits

Dave Eggers on His New Novel and Globalization

The writer talks about his new book, the decline of manufacturing, and why he prints his books in the U.S.

"It was hard for a lot of people—it hit the town hard on a psychic level"Photograph by Jim Goldberg for Bloomberg Businessweek

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By Devin Leonard

August 10, 2012 at 2:20 PM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

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This article is part of the August 13, 2012 issue of businessweek.

Eggers’s new book, A Hologram for the King, tells the story of an ex-Schwinn executive who travels to Saudi Arabia for financial salvation. Devin Leonard chats with Eggers about the decline of manufacturing and why he prints his books in the U.S.

Why write a novel about business?
Well, first of all I have been running a series of small businesses since I got out of college—since I was 12, really, with lawn cutting and snow shoveling and gardening and running summer camps. So it’s familiar. But as I read more and more about the decline of manufacturing, I was surprised at how much it tugged at me. I have a lot of friends that have been or still are in manufacturing. Over the last 15 years or so, I would check in with them and see how it was going and talk to them about what they had to move abroad or what they didn’t. So I started thinking about a guy at middle age, like Alan Clay, who might have been part of a lot of the outsourcing, unwittingly or not.