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A review by reidob
You Shall Know Our Velocity! by Dave Eggers
3.0
Let me just say that I love Dave Eggers, both as a writer and as something of a literary institution. He had single-handedly, it seems to me, brought back into our collective awareness the immediacy and vitality of the literary journal and short form fiction.
This is an early work by Eggers and is...well...fairly strange. But in its own quirky way, it is a wonderful exploration of, among other things, grief, confusion, uncertainty, youth and impetuosity. Here's the deal: Will has come into a chunk of money at about the same time that one of his two best friends is killed in a car accident. Will has some trouble coping with both of these facts and decides to go on a whirlwind African/European/Asian trip with his other best friend, Hand, where over a week they will go as far as they can (the original plan is for around the world, but this proves impractical) and give away as much of Will's money as they can while doing so. During the trip Will calls his mother and writes to his twin nieces (who he has nicknamed, delightfully, Mo and Thor) so realistically that they become part of the narrative.
A setup like this could devolve into just another buddy/travel book, but it veers far from any such triteness and into a weirdness that feels, at the same time, very intimate, immediate, and real. Will careens between emotions and has a restless mind that will not leave him in peace. Hand is impetuous and raw, with a sense of himself that feels neither truthful nor justified, but nonetheless makes him attractive to those around him, as many a free spirit does.
There's just one problem: according to Hand, who intervenes about 2/3 of the way into the novel, Will is an entirely unreliable narrator. I won't spoil the story for you by telling you just what Hand reveals, but it twists your head around and makes you take another look at everything that was written before and after. What is especially brilliant about this revelation, though, is that Hand himself is an unstable character and could be just as unreliable as Will. It makes for a comic and heartbreaking kind of confusion.
Here's the thing, though: what Eggers truly achieves (as does much of postmodernism at its best) is a challenge to our most cherished illusions. Because of the heartfelt nature of the composition and themes of the book, we suspect that Eggers may be writing from personal experience; that is one level of belief. We then become drawn into Will's narrative and allow it to become "real" for us, a second and complementary layer. As part of that narrative we come to know and love Hand, who then undercuts the reality all that has come before; a third layer. And though Hand's credibility is undermined in turn, we have come to know that both of these young men are just unstable enough that neither of them is entirely trustworthy. In other words, Eggers forces us to question our assumptions about what is real and our all-too-willing suspension of disbelief in the name of immersing ourselves in Story. While knowing that what Will writes is fiction, we want it to be "true"; if this were not so, Hand's revelations would be nothing but another part of the story. It is a wonderful conceit and expertly managed.
Unfortunately, the whole thing also feels a bit amateurish, as is fitting for a novel written by such a young man. It could be argued that this is an intentional form of storytelling on his part, but it really doesn't come off as such, more often reading like something written on notebook paper by a 16-year-old with delusions of grandeur who should be studying his geometry homework. Don't let this discourage you from reading this or other works by Eggers, though. His is one of a small number of voices in current American letters that are consistently worth reading.
This is an early work by Eggers and is...well...fairly strange. But in its own quirky way, it is a wonderful exploration of, among other things, grief, confusion, uncertainty, youth and impetuosity. Here's the deal: Will has come into a chunk of money at about the same time that one of his two best friends is killed in a car accident. Will has some trouble coping with both of these facts and decides to go on a whirlwind African/European/Asian trip with his other best friend, Hand, where over a week they will go as far as they can (the original plan is for around the world, but this proves impractical) and give away as much of Will's money as they can while doing so. During the trip Will calls his mother and writes to his twin nieces (who he has nicknamed, delightfully, Mo and Thor) so realistically that they become part of the narrative.
A setup like this could devolve into just another buddy/travel book, but it veers far from any such triteness and into a weirdness that feels, at the same time, very intimate, immediate, and real. Will careens between emotions and has a restless mind that will not leave him in peace. Hand is impetuous and raw, with a sense of himself that feels neither truthful nor justified, but nonetheless makes him attractive to those around him, as many a free spirit does.
There's just one problem: according to Hand, who intervenes about 2/3 of the way into the novel, Will is an entirely unreliable narrator. I won't spoil the story for you by telling you just what Hand reveals, but it twists your head around and makes you take another look at everything that was written before and after. What is especially brilliant about this revelation, though, is that Hand himself is an unstable character and could be just as unreliable as Will. It makes for a comic and heartbreaking kind of confusion.
Here's the thing, though: what Eggers truly achieves (as does much of postmodernism at its best) is a challenge to our most cherished illusions. Because of the heartfelt nature of the composition and themes of the book, we suspect that Eggers may be writing from personal experience; that is one level of belief. We then become drawn into Will's narrative and allow it to become "real" for us, a second and complementary layer. As part of that narrative we come to know and love Hand, who then undercuts the reality all that has come before; a third layer. And though Hand's credibility is undermined in turn, we have come to know that both of these young men are just unstable enough that neither of them is entirely trustworthy. In other words, Eggers forces us to question our assumptions about what is real and our all-too-willing suspension of disbelief in the name of immersing ourselves in Story. While knowing that what Will writes is fiction, we want it to be "true"; if this were not so, Hand's revelations would be nothing but another part of the story. It is a wonderful conceit and expertly managed.
Unfortunately, the whole thing also feels a bit amateurish, as is fitting for a novel written by such a young man. It could be argued that this is an intentional form of storytelling on his part, but it really doesn't come off as such, more often reading like something written on notebook paper by a 16-year-old with delusions of grandeur who should be studying his geometry homework. Don't let this discourage you from reading this or other works by Eggers, though. His is one of a small number of voices in current American letters that are consistently worth reading.