A producer and “casting person” for MTV’s The Real World. Laura invites Eggers to an interview after he submits an audition tape to be on The Real World: San Francisco. As she asks him questions, Eggers pontificates about a number of things, closely examining his life until it becomes clear that the interview has strayed from reality. “This isn’t really a transcript of the interview, is it?” Laura asks, and Eggers responds by admitting that it is more of a “catchall for a bunch of anecdotes that would be too awkward to force together otherwise.”
Laura Folger Quotes in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
The A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius quotes below are all either spoken by Laura Folger or refer to Laura Folger. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Note: all page numbers and citation info for the quotes below refer to the Vintage edition of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius published in 2001.
Chapter 6
Quotes
It was overwhelmingly white, of course, but racism of any kind—at least outwardly expressed—is kind of gauche, so we basically grew up without any sense of prejudice, firsthand or even in the abstract. With the kind of wealth and isolation we had from societal sorts of issues—crime, outside of the vandalism perpetrated by me and my friends, was unheard of—the town was free to see those kinds of things as a kind of entertainment—wrestling matches being contested by other people, in other places.
Related Characters:
Dave Eggers (speaker), Laura Folger
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
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Laura Folger Character Timeline in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
The timeline below shows where the character Laura Folger appears in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 6
...a strange but oddly captivating audition tape, Eggers receives a call from a producer named Laura, who invites him to come do a videotaped interview.
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When Eggers arrives at MTV’s San Francisco headquarters, Laura sits him down and asks him questions. Reproducing their conversation in the form of an...
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Laura asks if Eggers felt like Lake Forest was divided based on wealth, wondering if he...
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When Laura asks about whether or not there were many African American people in Lake Forest—or in...
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Eggers’s interview with Laura begins to spiral out into a vast overview of his entire childhood, tying in random...
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Laura asks Eggers what he thinks he can offer The Real World, and he says he...
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Laura asks Eggers why he wants to be on The Real World, and he says he...
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Transitioning to a conversation about death, Laura asks about the concept of dying with dignity, and Eggers says, “You will die, and...
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Eggers tells Laura that he rarely dreams of his parents. He has, however, dreamt about his father. In...
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...father broke the door off its hinges. “So this was a child abuse situation?” asks Laura, but Eggers claims that his father never spanked him very hard once he got ahold...
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Wrapping up their conversation, Eggers makes one more attempt to show Laura that he’s a “tragic” person who deserves to have his story told. “Can you not...
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