AWAY WE GO

2 simpatici amici ,Will* e Hand** ,decidono di partire,così, senza stare a fare troppi programmi
(che poi sono i viaggi migliori)
a disposizione solo una settimana di tempo,
per uno strampalato viaggio(quasi)intorno al mondo.
Il loro è ,piu' che altro ,un piombare a razzo in un posto,
per poi schizzare subito via,a prendere un altro aereo,
a macinare altri km in macchine a nolo,e così via...
L'idea di Will è semplice: muoversi di continuo ,accelerare più che si può,perché solo in questo modo gli pare possibile tentare di battere in velocita'(e lasciarsi alle spalle)il dolore straziante ,la rabbia e tutti i pensieri orrendi che lo torturano (incessantemente)da mesi.

* Will è uno dei parlatori piu' lenti che si possano incontrare, ma con una testa- quando non è presa in prestito da chissà chi- che saetta e turbina
** Hand è uno che è costantemente preda di una insaziabile curiosità ,che gli fa estendere le sue vibratili antenne su ogni cosa, dalle scienze esatte alle donne sensibili e ingenue (capito,no?)

PS.
Will ,tutto ammaccato (fuori e dentro)ispira continuamente tenerezza e un senso di protezione,e Hand(che tipo!)ispira anche lui,sì...
quantomeno simpatiche domande:
ma che razza di passo è -si può sapere? - il Passo del carrello della spesa?!

PPS.E che viaggio mai sarebbe senza qualcuno a cui scrivere cartoline? Hahaha, eggia'...
le cartoline per le gemelline Mo e Thor sono assolutamente A-D-O-R-A-B-I-L-I !tipo questa:
Mo! Thor!
(Lo sapevate che in Scandinavia quando scrivono i saluti mettono sempre i punti esclamativi?Credo che sia vero,anche se è stato Hand a raccontarmelo. Vi ricordate di Hand?Quello che vi ha portato all'acquario e si è messo a litigare con la guida.)Ho un consiglio per voi due.Non è che voglio che lo seguiate veramente.Voglio semplicemente che lo ascoltiate,che lo conserviate anche a conti fatti,quando ormai non è piu' utile.
Non datemi retta.I consigli raggiungono talmente di rado le persone a cui sono rivolti. Sono un po' come la spada nella roccia:li si lascia lì, e magari un giorno qualcuno li troverà e saprà che farsene.[etc etc etc]

Ok.Ora posso concludere lasciando anch'io la mia piccola spada nella roccia ?
Ecco: Dave Eggers è da leggere!
(ma mica dovete darmi retta per forza,ci mancherebbe :D )

(#reperto acosiano 2011)

A strange one for me. I was bored, then intrigued, then bored again, then excited, then disappointed. I didn't like the the narrator or his sidekick who were 27 but came across like 12 year old boys. The Boo Hoo factor was pretty forced. But I loved a few sections. So there. I do like how the 3 Eggers books I've read as of this moment have had very distinct vibes. He's definitely someone I'll keep reading.

My second time reading this book left me feeling even more invigorated by it and perplexed by it and in love with it than my first reading.

I thought this was a really unique novel. It starts out very bleak, but ends on a much more uplifting note.

This book was terrible, which was even more disappointing because usually I love Dave Eggers. While I may be in my 20's, it was impossible for me to relate to these stupid, self-absorbed characters who felt that their grief was so overwhelming they needed to destroy their lives while wallowing in their sorrow and run across the world throwing money away by taping it to donkeys. Get real. This book is absurd and I felt no connection with the characters which made me want to put it down every step of the way. I kept hoping it would get better because it is, after all, a Dave Eggers story, but it didn't.

This book was highly recommended. Maybe I missed something. It reminded me of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure and worse Dumb and Dumber.

With no obvious explanation, I fell into a mild depression in October 2002. Then I read this book and it lifted me out of it. The world seemed so much lighter and larger than my sad little routine in San Diego. I was reminded of my love for life and exploring. I was happy again.

Thanks, Dave!

i love dave eggers. this is the main character describing how his mind works (he sits at a desk at the top of a grassy hill overlooking a meadow and stream, and the library is inside the hill and is staffed by little pale, oily, hairless people that look like moles):

"And as much as I value the efficiency and professional elan of the library staff, I'd begun recently to worry about a new wrinkle in their procedures. For the most part, they're supposed to act on my requests when I make requests, and to otherwise just keep an orderly file system. Part of the deal, implicitly, is that at no time should the staff members *choose for me* what information I should be given. But lately I'd be sitting at my desk, trying either to work or to just admire the view and wonder about the stream, what makes it go, if there are fish inside, what their names might be, if any of them are secretly talking fish and if so what they might say--when there will suddenly be a library staff member at my side, and she will have one hand on my back, and the other will be pointing to the contents of a file she's brought me and has opened on my desk, so that I will follow her finger to where she's pointing, and when I see what she's pointing to I will gasp."

Clever premise that quickly got VERY TIRED. This was a bit like watching a sitcom where they make the same joke over and over again and by the end of the episode you’re like sweet mother of mercy make it stop

I heart Dave Eggers. This book is awesome, especially if you enjoy traveling in obscure countries and dissecting ridiculous adventures for meaning. Eggers' style is very sticky and his humor is right in my wheelhouse. I liked this book significantly more than "A Heartbreaking Work..." (which was a fun read nonetheless). Something about the fact that it's a true novel and not quite as self-indulgent and autobiographical.

Anyway, I only feel slightly silly saying this is one of my favorite books. Admittedly, the reading experience was part of it -- I read it while lounging in Dutch coffeeshops during my final days of studying in Leiden, and world travel was a much-explored and romanticized theme for me -- but the characters are quirky and fascinating and the cameo appearances by random hilarious foreign fools in Senegal, Estonia and the like are not to be missed.

The illustrious Hand makes a later appearance in "How We Are Hungry," Eggers' book of short stories, in a story about surfing in Costa Rica where the horses have no symbolic significance.

n  

I don't know what that was, all that dancing -- what we're allowed to do when we're looking for things we're required to do. What are we allowed to do when we're looking for things we're required to do?

n
You Shall Know Our Velocity has a strange history: Meant as a fictional memoir, it was released in 2002, with an apparently strangely textured hardcover and the opening paragraph, announcing the author's untimely death, printed on the front. In May of 2003, the book was renamed Sacrament and an extra chapter -- supposedly written by the dead author's friend at a later time to rebut details of the original book -- was inserted two thirds of the way through. In September of 2003, the book was again retitled You Shall Know Our Velocity! (note the exclamation mark) for the paperback edition (the one I read), complete with the extra chapter and a note on the cover that states, "This paperback edition includes significant changes and additions". Anyone who has read A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius knows that Dave Eggers has a quirky sense of style, so it begs the question: Is You Shall Know Our Velocity! an innovative comment on the nature of memoir or a self-indulgent art piece?

As I often do, I read some old newspaper reviews of this book after finishing it and it was interesting to me that critics were mostly underwhelmed by the original version, but since I haven't found a review of the "complete" version, their critique seems nearly irrelevant. One thing I did find interesting: Writing in Salon, Peter Kurth notes of the two main characters, "Will (Thought) has a friend called Hand (Action)". I hadn't noticed that, but again, is that truly clever or fatally ironic?

In Hand's rebuttal chapter, in which he lists all of the parts that Will had made up, he writes:

n  

I realize how difficult the world makes it for those who want to lead and talk about unusual lives in a candid way, in a first-person way. I understand that to sublimate a life in fictions, to spread the ashes of one's life over a number of stories and books, is considerably better-accepted, and protects one greatly from certain perils -- notably, the rousing of anger or scorn of all the bitches of the world (more often male than female). But then again, I don't know -- maybe he wasn't afraid of that sort of thing. Maybe he just wanted to fictionalize for his own entertainment. Maybe he found it artful.

n
As this was Eggers' first novel, coming on the heels of his debut tragic memoir, I have to believe that this is a comment on the author's own experience -- so did he write this book as an example of how he could have sublimated and fictionalised his own losses if he had wanted to, or did he mean it to be "artful"? Is this an example of meta-ironic hipsterism, or did Eggers purposefully capture that flannel-and-beard ethos?

Maybe the only solution is to consider You Shall Know Our Velocity! on its own terms, and so far as that goes, it's an interesting enough story: After Will and Hand's friend Jack dies in a car accident, the two friends decide to spend a week flying around the world and giving away $32k (all that Will has left of an $80k windfall). Problems with weather and visas and flight schedules force them to scale back the scope of the trip (in the end they only make it to Senegal, Morocco, Estonia and Latvia) and giving away the money doesn't fulfill them as they had hoped. That's the book that the reviewers initially read, but the information that Hand later inserts throws the entire venture into a different light:  Hand states that they never had a friend named Jack, so of course, the foundational concept of the book -- a trip born of grief -- is a lie; while Will blames Hand for a severe beating he received from three men (that has lingering neurological and physical effects, not to mention the grotesqueness of his face that impacts how everyone they meet interacts with Will), the beating didn't happen; Will's mother, who he calls several times during the trip, had died years earlier; Will never had a brother, someone he refers to a few times; Will still has the remainder of the $80k to go home to, undermining the secondary conceit of the plot; and since Hand points out that a ghostwriter had added the first paragraph of the original edition, describing how Will and his mother died in a ferry accident, he casts doubt on the authorship of the entire book. The writing -- especially the conversations -- was clever and I was interested in the story…but this wasn't great until I started thinking about everything off the page; everything I've written about here. But, of course, what I'm thinking about is what Eggers wanted me to think about, so does that make it great?

In the end, I still don't know if this was art or just a guy with a bag on his head.

n  n

Well, I don't know. The appealing cover really got me to jump in so eagerly, the book content kinda betrayed its look.

Through the first one fourth, the book was so amusing I laughed out loud imagining how things were happening. Then everything just fell flat, pushing 'boring' to a new level.

It annoyed me the ways the two guys conducted to 'get rid of' the money Will was accidentally blessed with. I understand that they were young guys totally untalented and lost in their own world and trying to make sense of the lives; still, their characteristics, intentions, actions, and even conversations were confusing, absurd and greatly disturbing.

The made-up conversations in Will's head were just as irritating as his exaggerated tragic grief and his denying attitude towards life and reality. The last straw was when he was hit with guilt and remorse for their cruelty pouring gasoline and burning a poor cow alive back when they were "dark-hearted" teenage Hand and Will, all I wished for was this book would end with them dying the most horrible death ever, even as fictitious characters.

This story was really a pain, drooling on with the protagonists' ongoing dragging from places to places. It, however, perfectly depicted the two cursed lost souls striving to prove to the world they understood life oh-so-well and insisted that they were hideously and pathetically unique.