A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius was a very enjoyable read for me. One of the first things I liked about it, something that I thought was reasserted throughout the excerpt, was that the narrator did not ask for the reader's sympathy in the self-pitying way that the narrators of many memoirs do. What I mean by this is that while the situations in Heartbreaking Work were unfortunate and it was in fact very easy for the reader to feel sorry for the narrator, neither the author of the memoir nor his character in the narrative portrayed self-pity, in my opinion. Eggers's character seemed almost unaware of the misfortune of his situation, and seemed to simply accept it and move on.
The excerpt from Blankets was my favorite of these pieces. I felt it was bursting with a literary value that did not come off (to me) as pretentious or contrived at all. Thompson's first struggle--the break-up--was very universal and portrayed with a stark reality (excellently supported by the accompanying pictures) that made it very tangible, and the pressure to which he was subjected about college was also very easily identifiable. I thought the symbolism (particularly the bits about "looking directly at the sun" and the ice as a "scab") was very well done, and the metaphors added a lot to the memoir.
As far as The Winged Seed, I didn't quite connect to it like I did the other two selections. While it was well written and the topic of alienation in general was apparent to me, I feel that I missed the true point that Li-Young was trying to make. I didn't see the connection between his linguistic struggles, his father's faith, and Ethel Black.
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