The Bookworm: You Shall Know Our Velocity!

You Shall Know Our Velocity!, by Dave Eggers. 353 pages. Vintage Books. 2002.

—But Jack I’ve spent this day in Latvia thinking I would see you. The people here look like us, look like our neighbors, and the forest look like ours—there was a road today, one we followed looking for the Liv, that bent through pine so much like the road that takes us to Phelps and for a second I thought that yes something like this was possible and yes Hand and I would be delivered to you. I thought for a second that around the bend in the road there would be light and clarity and you’d be there and it would be like some kind of surprise party, you know what I mean? (Page 300.)

It took me way too long to read this book. I started it sometime in December and have been reading it in small chunks, off and on, since Christmas. Having not read it for a week or so, I finally managed to finish the last fifty pages this weekend.

Velocity! is a well-written and odd little book I first learned about nine years ago. Sweets read it for a post-Modern lit class and he showed me the odd pictures and typesetting devises that peppered the text. Years later, when we would hang out at his place, I admired Velocity! on his bookshelf; I would often consider buying my own copy at book stores. Needless to say, Velocity! had been on my mental list of must-read books for a while and I was able to buy Sweets’ copy at a garage sale he had last fall. (I bought it along with a couple other books I have lined-up in my reading queue. I got them all for super cheap, too, since Sweets and Zaza practically begged me to take them. I think I bought four or five books for a buck.)

Velocity! is narrated by Will, the main character, who received a windfall of $80,000 for screwing in a light bulb. That’s right: he got eighty grand for screwing in a light bulb — in a roundabout way, that is. Will, who works with a construction contractor, was chosen to model for the logo of a light bulb manufacturer. A design agency took a picture of him screwing in a light bulb, turned it into an NBA-like silhouette, and Will got $80,000. However, Will does not really want it, so he and his best friend, Hand, have decided to travel the world in one week and give the money to the neediest people they meet on their journey.

Emotionally complicating the whole thing is the fact Will and Hand’s good buddy, Jack, died months earlier in a bizarre car accident: while slowly and carefully driving along a highway, Jack’s car was literally run over by a speeding eighteen-wheeler. Will and Hand have taken Jack’s death pretty hard, and Will especially has had trouble coping. The memories associated with the accident, the funeral, and the way the morticians failed to realistically reconstruct Jack’s facial features are always resurfacing and causing Will aguish — at least for half of the book. After a certain point, Jack’s death begins to play a smaller role and memories of him become fewer and far between. Nonetheless, Jack’s absence is crucial and the back story focusing on his death and its aftermath — Will was beaten to a pulp while looking through a storage unit full of Jack’s things and bares the vicious scars throughout the book — is incredibly detailed and rich.

On the subject of Will and Hand: after a certain point I started to hate them. After they each climbed twenty feet into trees in a Latvian forest and were about to jump from one tree to another, I wrote on the page, “I hope they die.” That is pretty awful; outside of the Fear Street series, I usually do not take a rooting interest in the demise of characters, but I could not resist with Will and Hand. They were clueless and spoiled at best and disorganized buffoons at worse. Did they make it across the world? Hell no. Why? Because they were complete idiots, Hand especially. At times they were curious and respectful, and at others they were ugly Americans, demanding that something work in their favor despite the fact they were unprepared. They reminded me of a woman I once saw at the airport in Orange County. She was dressed in one of those tasteless Victoria’s Secret jumpsuits and a man pulled her three, massive rolling suitcases to one of the electronic check-in kiosks for her. She read aloud what was on the screen: that she needed a major credit card, a debit card, or a passport to check-in. “But I didn’t bring any of those!” she exclaimed. Ugh!

However, they somehow managed to give the money away. They gave it to peasants who helped them, left it in make-shift envelopes at the entrance of shanties, and even buried it in a Latvian forest and left a treasure map at a playground in a nearby town. However, I think Will and Hand argued more about how to give the money away than anything else. In the end, they resorted to tossing wads of it out the window of their rental car.

Were they searching for Jack? Perhaps Will was. Hand was along for the ride, more or less; it seems like he just wanted to get away. Any connection with Jack’s death and their altruistic intentions with the money is vague for me. Little is known about Jack so I do not think they were doing it in his honor. Honestly, if I had finished the book sooner and could easily recall all the vital details from the back story and beginning of the book, perhaps I would be able to see some correlation. However, the book did not hold my attention after a certain point. Complicating matters is how rushed the last twenty or thirty pages are. It truly felt like Eggers was pressed against some kind of urgent deadline and hammered out the ending as fast as possible, making it as convenient as possible. Though Will and Hand’s week had come to an end, I feel the book needed another twenty pages or so to tie loose ends — or at least conclude at a more fitting pace.

Despite that, Velocity! was very well-written and I am glad I finally got a chance to read it.

Words I learned/am still unfamiliar with: All definitions are courtesy of my MacBook dictionary. Tannin: “a yellowish or brownish bitter-tasting organic substance present in some galls, barks, and other plant tissues, consisting of derivatives of gallic acid, used in leather production and ink manufacture.” Katabatic: “(of a wind) caused by local downward motion of cool air.” Sui generis: “unique.” Mewl: “(esp. of a baby) cry feebly or querulously; whimper.” Soutane: “a type of cassock worn by Roman Catholic priests.” Pachinko: “a Japanese form of pinball.” Simian: “relating to, resembling, or affecting apes or monkeys.” Ziggurat: “(in ancient Mesopotamia) a rectangular stepped tower, sometimes surmounted by a temple. Ziggurats are first attested in the late 3rd millennium BC and probably inspired the biblical story of the Tower of Babel.” Fey: “giving an impression of vague unworldliness.” Aquiline: “like an eagle.” Klieg: “a powerful electric lamp used in filming.”