Dave Eggers on His Book “The Captain and the Glory”

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Is this something from your story, completely different story, obviously, a satire of a captain who’s taken charge of a ship, an incompetent, who throws all the manuals and all the norms out the window, is this something from that, that we can learn about our country, our world? Do you think about that now, a year after that book was published?

DAVE EGGERS, AUTHOR, “THE CAPTAIN AND THE GLORY”: I think we have to take ourselves seriously again as a country. And I think it starts at the educational level. I think that there’s a maxim in this country that says anybody that can — anybody can grow up and become president. But I don’t think we understand exactly what that means. It doesn’t mean that anybody that has built golf courses and assigns his name to steaks can then govern a nation of 330 million. I think we have got to get back to respecting expertise, competence, and a respect for the work of governing. And until we do that, we’re going to keep spiraling into a laughingstock.

AMANPOUR: So, it’s really interesting, because the end, as you said, is vaguely optimistic. The captain escaped, and the workers on board the ship pull together to try to restore the Glory, as it’s called, to its former working self. So, I just want to read this to you. It’s an excerpt. “This additional part of life on the Glory, though horrifying and against every belief system and moral code ever devised by humans, was new, and anything new was something different, and different was inherently good.” Again, does that remind you of anything? You talk about the captain. You talk about his supporters as his enthusiastic enablers, and you talk about his opposition as basically the kindly mutineers, but incompetence. Things — how do you see that, the dynamic, playing out in the United States right now ahead of this election?

EGGERS: I think that his supporters — and I noticed this going to Trump rallies while he was a candidate — were really (AUDIO GAP) for its own sake. And they had a sort of gleeful attitude toward the prank, almost, of electing a clearly unqualified outsider with no respect for the nation’s history, Constitution, or rule of law. They thought, as we did in high school when you elect the least electable and least qualified person to be your student council president, wouldn’t it be funny if? And I think that Trump was the most surprised to be elected, but his supporters were also shocked. And I think that it goes to just the lack of seriousness among the electorate of the job of president and the dignity of the White House. And I think we can get back to it. It feels like we’re trending that way. And I really do — I’m always optimistic. I do think that we can restore a sort of sense of self-esteem and self-seriousness.