When Eggers thinks about how he’s connected to millions of people, he again transcends the boundaries of his story, this time acknowledging readers and imagining them reading about his life. By saying that he’s “trying to pump blood” to his audience, he recalls his earlier belief that he has something valuable to contribute—a belief he expressed to Laura in his
Real World interview. This book, he suggests, is for his readers, whom he “hate[s],” perhaps because he knows they’ll never truly understand his experience regardless of how hard he tries.