


	search citypaper.net

Also this issue:

Fiction & Non-fiction

Q&A

October 10-16, 2002

cover story

Velocity's Escape

You can read Dave Eggers' novel as a parable of the burdens of fame -- or you can just enjoy it.

by John Freeman

In the past two years, Dave Eggers has pulled a fast one on big publishing. As his ultra-hip memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, galloped up bestseller lists, Eggers fired his agent, beefed up his literary journal, McSweeney’s, and ventured into publishing himself.

Now, in a move that puts him in company with Thomas Paine and Walt Whitman, Eggers is self-publishing his second book, a novel called You Shall Know Our Velocity, which will be sold only through McSweeney's website (www.mcsweeneys.net) and at select independent booksellers.

Despite Eggers' cult status, the venture will likely have legs. After a slow start, the McSweeney's journal has taken off and evolved into one of the most exciting literary magazines to debut since the Paris Review. McSweeney's publishing events (like Philadelphia's 215 Festival) have turned into a kind of traveling Dadaist art show, with Eggers as MC, They Might Be Giants as the house band and other big name authors like Zadie Smith and Rick Moody as willing participants.

As with everything Eggers participates in, however, it's easy to get sidetracked concentrating on him, rather than the work itself. The bottom line is this: Eggers has written a terrific novel, an entertaining and imaginative tale about two young men -- one rich, one not -- who decide to travel the globe in a week while giving away $32,000.

"I had gotten some money about a year before, in a windfall kind of way," explains Will Chmlielewski, the novel's garrulous 27-year-old hero, "and had been both grateful and constantly confused about it. My confusion knew no limits. And how I would get rid of it, and most of it, and believed purging would provide clarity."

And so off we go, on a manic ride that's like Cannonball Run with a Red Cross angle. Will is joined by his childhood best friend, Hand, an Adam Sandler-like goofball who was once the second-ranked swimmer in Wisconsin and has moved into a career in weather futures. While Will worriedly counts out his money, Hand gets the task of actually handing out the dough, since Will feels so guilty for having it that he doesn't even like to touch it.

The duo's first stop is in Dakar, Senegal, where they begin to realize that philanthropy isn't free and easy. Their first beneficiaries turn out to be prostitutes; a "student" they hope to help is revealed as a con artist. A good Samaritan who fixes their roadside flat refuses their money.

Things don't get any easier when they move on to Morocco, and Estonia, where cultural and language barriers make the handing out of money awkward and not very satisfying. The truth is, although Will wants to give this money away, a small part of him needs to feel thanked. And yet as soon as he senses this need in himself, Will excoriates himself for it.

To convey this kind of internal turmoil, Will narrates this adventure in the same talky, self-reflexive style that Eggers used in his memoir, which also revolved around issues of guilt and profiteering on other people's pain. On many occasions, Will's own internal conversations -- do I give out of guilt or generosity, he asks himself -- drown out actual conversations he's having with Hand.

Although Eggers does a superb job of bringing these moral issues to life in Will's head, what makes the novel such fun is the way Will and Hand's deliberations exaggerate their significance, rendering them farcical. Their off-the-cuff conversations about whether or not to give, or how to give, read like snippets from Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, in which the two henchmen Claudius sends to kill Hamlet spend an entire play bickering with one another.

Here are Will and Hand trying to figure out what to do with one pouch full of greenbacks:

"'We could drop it through their window,' I said. 'No,' Hand said. 'Why?' 'Let's do the goat.' We had to. Hand got the pouch and applied new tape to its side. We were ready. 'You come at him from the front,' Hand said, 'and I'll sneak up the side. You distract him.' 'With what?' 'Make some hand movements.' The goat was watching me now. He was on a long leash. 'Like shadow puppets?'"

Silliness aside, Eggers makes a strong argument for the arbitrary nature of wealth, and how difficult it is to redistribute it in a way that is not equally arbitrary. At one point, Will and Hand simply take many single block-long cab rides, handing each driver a fifty-dollar bill for the fare. In another hilarious scene, they bargain the price of a trinket in Morocco upward from its seller's absurdly low asking price. Without blinking an eye, the man goes along with the game.

Although Eggers coats this meditation on generosity in the sugar of his helium-inflected humor, there is a self-conscious sadness here, too. It is obvious on more than a few occasions that Eggers is vetting the demons of his own recently minted celebrity on the page. Certain descriptions of Will's anxiety over his capriciously acquired money sound much like an over-toured author, wondering if he'd made some sort of Faustian bargain.

Here is Will, wearying of the chore of signing so many travelers checks: "I got sick of my signature. I couldn't do it anymore; I hated my name. I had signed ninety checks and rubbed my tired hand like they do on commercials for arthritis. And slowly I realized I would have to sign again, each time I used or cashed one, in the presence of the teller or clerk. Five hundred and eighty-six times my signature would claim this money. Mine! Mine! Swoop! Swoop! I hated the fact of this money and couldn't wait for its dissolution."

Writing of one's demons is nothing new in novels. In fact, some of our best contemporary fiction comes from a deeply personal place. One can almost plot the flameouts of Saul Bellow's marriages through his novel, as one could track W.G. Sebald's peregrinations across the globe in his ineffably superb books. Yet to indulge this kind of connecting the dots misses the point of reading fiction. Just as the Jonathan Safran Foer featured in Everything is Illuminated is and is not that book's author, You Shall Know Our Velocity is a book about Dave Eggers, but also about quite a bit more than that.

Thus, a reader has a choice upon cracking this novel: One can read voyeuristically, constantly trying to peel back the scrim to find Dave Eggers working the foot pedals. Or one can read the book as a tale should be read -- openly, and with little care of whether the story relates is true in the literal sense. The fact that the reader is in control over this experience gives each page a palpable tension.

In his new volume of essays, How to be Alone, Jonathan Franzen bemoans the fact that readers, corrupted by other media, have begun opening books wondering what literature could bring to them, rather than what they could bring to it. Well, here is a book that will vary depending on how sincerely it is read. If you want to ponder the ethics of generosity, personal and global, You Shall Know Our Velocity is an excellent place to begin. But if you want to know about Dave Eggers, you might be better off buying a glossy magazine. Soon enough, it'll be impossible to open one without reading about the guy.

-- Respond to this article in our Forums -- click to jump there