I go back and forth on Dave Eggers (author of the memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and founder of McSweeney’s Internet Tendency). When I read his writing (particularly the nonfiction stuff) I love him. When I hear about his writing a movie, funding charitable concerns for youth literacy, and starting oral history projects, I can’t help it–I start to get a little tired of him. Primarily because I’m jealous. I mean, come on. Does the guy ever sleep?

But today’s a day when I love him with that same uncomplicated love I felt for him when I first finished A Heartbreaking Work… Primarily because he had this to say, when interviewed by Salon writer Andrew O’Hehir:

“Our students at 826 Valencia still have a newspaper class, where we print an actual newspaper, and we do magazine classes and anthologies where they’re all printed on paper. That’s the main way we get them motivated, that they know it’s going to be in print. It’s much harder for us to motivate the students when they think it’s only going to be on the Web.”

God bless him. Not it may seem churlish to be saying this on, you know, a web site (and a damn fine web site at that) but something about hearing that kids today (or, as ancient people in our mid-30s like me say, “those darn kids”) still like to see some things in print does my heart good. And precious little does that anymore, so I’ll take it.