You Shall Know Our Velocity

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You Shall Know Our Velocity
Cover of a reprint edition
Author	Dave Eggers
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Novel
Publisher	McSweeney's
Publication date	September 2002
Media type	Print (hardcover & paperback)
Pages	371 pp (first edition, hardcover)
ISBN	ISBN 0-9703355-5-5 (first edition, hardcover)

You Shall Know Our Velocity is a 2002 novel by Dave Eggers. It was Eggers's debut novel, following the success of his memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000).

The plot follows Will and Hand, two childhood friends who set out on a week-long, around-the-world odyssey, ostensibly to give away a large sum of money.

[edit] Plot summary

Will has surprisingly come into a large amount of money. His photograph screwing in a lightbulb has been made a silhouette and is being used as a picture for the company's lightbulb boxes. He is uncomfortable having this money because of a subplot that bursts into several scenes in the book: Will and Hand's third friend, Jack, had recently been killed in a car accident, and the two had ambitions to use the money to save his life, but to no avail. Will and Hand buy plane tickets to the most obscure countries possible, wherein they will give the money away, bit by bit, to people whom they arbitrarily decide are most deserving. According to Hand, they gave to people for the benefit of both parties--as a sacrament with the purpose of restoring a faith in humanity. Without a solid set of criteria, or a definitive direction in their plan, this proves surprisingly difficult, and they experience much awkward confusion and moral uncertainty. They often fear being robbed and killed. They are barely able to achieve their goal of giving away their money, and are reduced to pretending to ask for directions, and taping money to barn animals. Will becomes unstable and begins to lose his composure. The plot is both a log of the journey, as well as a look into the mind of the narrator, Will, who often feels isolated, confused, and shy.

A pseudo-sequel entitled '"The Only Meaning of the Oil-Wet Water" follows Hand and the minor character Pilar in Central America. This short story is featured in the collection How We Are Hungry: Stories.

[edit] Different editions

In February 2003 Eggers and McSweeney's published Sacrament, a retitled hardcover edition of You Shall Know Our Velocity that included a new 49-page section inserted into the middle of the story. The U.S. trade-paperback edition of You Shall Know Our Velocity (with an exclamation point added to the title), released later that year by Vintage, included this new material. The addition, narrated by Hand, calls into question the reliability of the narrator, and, depending on which version is read, You Shall Know Our Velocity can be viewed as two different stories. In Hand's version, their third friend, Jack, never actually existed. Instead, he is a metaphorical representation of Will's mother, a device he used to cope with the loss that apparently occurred several years before the trip (rather than alive and in contact with Will as in his version). Hand also corrects one of the most startling scenes in Will's version, in which he breaks down emotionally, claiming that Will was too shy to do such a thing. Hand does say that the Will's version was 85% true, though he did hate the title, renaming it "Sacrament."

The original version was narrated entirely by Will. In the world of the revised version, Will's memoirs were published six years earlier, and Hand has taken it upon himself to insert his own perspective immediately after the climax of the story. Hand's meta-narrative is entirely self-contained, and it is as much a personal digression as it is a relevant critique of the story as presented by Will.