One way of reading the title, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, is obviously to take it as a tongue-in-cheek reference to the book itself, in which case, the title points to the aspects of Eggers' character that the autobiography observes in full detail: his self-awareness (perhaps narcissism), his tendency to go big, and his tendency to be epic and tragic. However, that isn't the only way to understand the title. Perhaps a more nuanced interpretation of the work is to see that Eggers is showing the reader an artistic experience that he was made to witness: his own life.
Yes, as a character, Eggers does his part to be epic and participatory. The reader only has to read a few chapters to see that Eggers is an unusual cat. He leaves his father's funeral to sleep with his girlfriend, a bizarre, symbolic decision that speaks to his emotional complexity and deliberateness. He ends up backstage at an MTV shooting, and he is beside himself by the comings and goings of his story. Notice that sometimes, the epic quality of his story is because he does crazy things, but also, it is often just epic without his involvement whatsoever.
The fact that Eggers's autonomy is not the only aspect of the story on the table is a good reason to consider the autobiography as a shared testimony of life witnessed. He was there, and he did stuff, but consider scenes like his passing of the kidney stone. That pain takes him to an emotional place of absolute disaster. The pain of passing a kidney stone is enough to make him question reality; how could this life be real? How could such a pain really exist? Next to this, the deaths of his friends, of his parents, and eventually of himself, can be seen for their full existential merit. The Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is not the book; it is the life that he was made to witness, into which he was thrust as a character.
