http://betterbooktitles.com/post/4046...

I was hesitant to read this upon Julie's recommendation, because the basic premise turned me off. A pair of friends have just lost their other best mate. They hatch a plan to travel around various corners of the world handing out at random large sums of money, until they have completely exhausted their quite significant savings. By the way, that is all revealed in the first few pages, so nothing is spoiled.

My first reaction was that this seemingly cathartic and symbolic gesture didn't pass literary non-bullshit muster. Upon learning the premise, I thought I knew everything that there was to know about the novel. But the story took off in a completely different direction from what I expected. The writing is very sincere and un-self-conscious. The tone is much more complex and intriguing. And the story is far more interesting than the shallow set-up suggests.

It seems to me that Eggers may have intentionally chosen the off-putting premise and basic outline so that he could build an underlying story that transcends its own cliche and tangible elements. It's fantastic! I enjoyed it much more than "Heartbreaking Work blah blah..."

I found this book to be thought provoking and annoying at once. Either way, at times I wanted to tell him to "shut up" and then just walk away from the book. It was almost like I was having a long drawn out conversation with an old friend that I didn't really relate with anymore. On the other hand, it really got into my head and made me consider the different ways people deal with grief. Maybe because I could relate to Will's ability to have conversations with people without them actually knowing it, or because I found his pain and torment "filing system" familiar; all in all, I found it funny and witty and I did enjoy it.

Kızgınım ey dostlar. Bir kitabı hevesle elinize alıyorsunuz ve aslında çok daha iyisini daha önceden okuduğunuzu fark ediyorsunuz ve bu bir kaç kez tekrarlanmış aslında.

Dünyanın maddi manevi ağırlıklarından kurtulmak için yola çıkan çok roman kahramanı var değil mi? Yola çıkarlar ve asla arkalarına bakmazlar ve her şeyden ve herkesten nefret ediyorlardır. Buraya kadar sorun yok. Yalnız şöyle ki:

Bu elemanların dertleri nedir? Bir sorun olmalı ortada
Pekala sorun sadece varoluşsal bir acı diyelim, bu halde onu iyi sunmalısın
Hikayenin geneline sinen nihilist bakış açısı da ikiye ayrılıyor burada:

Raskolnikov'un çektiği gibi bir "iman ağrısı" mı
Yoksa ergen acılar mı

İşte okuduğum dört kitapta da bu konular ele alınıyorlardı ve ben en iyisini en başta okumuştum. Kitapların gerçek hayattan yola çıkılarak yazılması ilk iki kitabı yeterince doyuruyordu ve evet bu adamların bir dertleri vardı. Bu adamların canı boş yere yanmıyordu.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline-Gecenin Sonuna Yolculuk
Henry Miller- Yengeç Dönencesi

Ya diğer ikisi. Ahh azizler onların derdi sadece kafayı uyuşturmak emin olun.

Dave Eggers-Hızımızı Tadacaksınız
Hakan Günday- Kinyas ve Kayra

Hızımızı Tadacaksınız'ta dünyayı kendi dünyasından ibaret sanan iki tane gerizekalı amerikalının- ki kendileri Saygı Duyduğum Nadir Amerikalılar Listesi* 'ne girmekten çok uzaklar- maddi(!) ve manevi ağırlıklarından kurtulmak için sağa sola lütfedip para saçması ve yaşadıkları yerden kaçmaya çalışmaları falan filan. Ah canım roman kahramanı çok mu üzüldün. Dünyanın boktan bir yer olduğunu yirmi yedi yaşında mı anladın ve bununla başa çıkamıyor musun? Hımm peki. Kitabın caaanım Sirenden çıkması da pek bir üzücü

*Saygı Duyduğum Nadir Amerikalılar Listesi

Malcolm X
Alexander Supertramp
Sylvia Plath
Emily Dickinson
Sallinger
Ursula K.Le Guin
Tom Robbins
şimdilik

An unfortunate sophmore slump. Eggers tries to follow up the critically acclaimed and highly enjoyable A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius with a more trifling novel, but he aims for nothing and hits just that. The premise kept me hoping for a catharsis or point of any kind but the novel just goes nowhere.

The hardback edition, however, is one of the coolest books that I own. The text actually starts on the front cover of the book and continues from there. His unusual font choice and the interpolation of graphics and photos helps to characterize the book as truly Eggers. If he hadn't redeemed himself with his later books I might have recommended that he go into graphic design.

I read the book, read the reviews, found out that I completely missed what I think was a major plot point. That couldn't be, because I read it from cover to cover and enjoyed it immensely. I then realized that the version of the book I read was later revised, with an additional segment, with the major plot point. Duh. Thanks Eggers, quirky author you. I'm all for gimmicks, but honestly.

I'm not sure I understood what Will and Hand stood for, since not much of their actions have a background, not much explanation, except for the one the major plot point overturns. They're both losers, they want to travel the world, but only have 7 days, and most days they're just waiting around for the connecting planes. They want to go to a number of places, go nowhere close; they want to give out money, but find it surprisingly difficult and in some cases enabling something they didn't want to. There's sex on offer in several places, they take none. None of it implied anything to me that I can explain. But I still loved the book, for some reason. It was refreshing and fun, even if loss featured in almost every page and every action. I also adored Will and Hand. Maybe I just like gimmicks.

Remember those intoxicated days of the the early 2000's financial boom? Positive thinking? Anything was possible? There would always be more money round the corner? Somehow you'd always get by?

Or perhaps you weren't quite feeling it, and scoffed at this stuff like Billy Bragg dismissing a decade of glorious synthpop and silly clothes in one anti-Thatcher tirade. Though, on the basis of cosmic ordering infomercials featuring Noel Edmonds, and Kirsty and Phil's Pickfords porn, who could blame you?

You Shall Know Our Velocity isn't a tale of taking out a 120% mortgage to set up a personal shopping business with your very own branded Smart car, but it's nonetheless possessed by the spirit of that time, as Will and his mate Hand go on a short unplanned world tour to give away $40,000 he earned for unintentionally being featured in an advert.

Random nights out with insalubrious Russians, taping dollars to African donkeys, and other such madcap antics, interspersed with raw ponderings on the death of a friend and the aftermath of trauma almost can't help but sound when described in summary in 2012, like the InstaHipstaMatic polaroid cliche that launched a thousand blogs.

But actually, it's amazing because of the ten-years-ago-or-more unknowing innocence and because no-one can describe dark elated adventure quite like Eggers. There are good writers who can capture the feeling of a time and place in aspic. But Eggers does it in technicolour 3D hypervirtual reality and then adds a weird, yet brilliantly accurate metaphor that, as when the optician finds the perfect lens, makes you see it all differently again.

Me cae bien Dave Eggers. Diría que muy bien. Es de esos escritores que sabes que son una personalidad (a veces más conocidos por ser una personalidad más que por sus libros). La revista que fundó, McSweeney’s, goza de buena reputación editorial. Es un escritor que cuida mucho, mucho más de lo normal, el aspecto de sus ediciones. Tiene una vena muy lúdica del libro como objeto. Y además me gustó mucho El Círculo: una novela un tanto criticable con una adaptación increíblemente mediocre.

Pero su primera novela me trajo dando bandazos. En un sube y baja. Como en una montaña rusa. Llegando de forma extática a altas cumbres, y luego dándome un bajón por alguna decisión creativa o la ejecución de la trama.

De lo que no hay duda es de la maestría técnica de Eggers. La escritura experimental, los monólogos interiores, incluso el metatexto que aparece a veces. Todo tiene su razón de ser. El problema es que cuenta una historia que da bandazos con personajes que llegan a fastidiar.

Porque ésta es una novela típica de la generación X: narrando las vidas disociadas de gente que ha crecido sin mucho sentido. En su momento yo era un declarado fan de este tipo de novelas, pero eso fue antes de que mi propia generación madurara. Si bien el groupthink actual millenial descarga su ira contra los boomers, se olvida de sus hermanos y primos y tíos de la generación X. Y cuando uno regresa ya empapado (estando de acuerdo o no) de su propio clima cultural, siente que debe resoplar al ver las cosas que preocupaban a los X. NUESTROS PROBLEMAS SON MÁS ACUCIANTES!!! Parece ser el grito de guerra. En mi caso, temo que no voy a volver a ver igual una novela de éstas.

El protagonista, Will, sufre de un obvio caso de PTSD después de perder a uno de sus mejores amigos en un accidente. En esto recuerda a Holden Caulfield, pero en más fastidioso. Aquí cabe decir que Will y su amigo Hand actúan de una forma muy inmadura, que no se puede adscribir al estrés postraumático. Tienen 27 años!!!! Y se comportan como dudes de universidad muy bien intencionados, pero culturalmente insensibles, imprudentes y tontos.

En suma, en su debut Eggers escribió una novela briosa, arriesgada y taimada. Pero es tan irregular y los personajes tan fuera de lo normal que no le puedo dar más estrellas.

My favorite types of books are about trips with friends or are meditations in grief/loneliness and this is both.

I'm surprised I hadn't heard more about this one prior to picking it up. You Shall Know has Eggers in top form. Never mind all the clever metafictional pyrotechnics (all of which are very well done, by the way)--within lies everything you'd want in a novel. Laughter a-plenty, beautiful prose, wonderfully executed dialogue, passages that you'll want to read back two, three, four times. I've found through Goodreads that my fatal weakness as a book-reviewer is that when I really like something, I often find myself at a loss for things to say about it. So consider the lack of substance here a testament to Eggers' astonishing achievement.

I usually don’t blog books I don’t like, but You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers deserves special treatment because it proved such a disappointment. The opening sentence is one of the best I’ve ever seen (The caps are from the text itself.)

EVERYTHING WITHIN TAKES PLACE AFTER JACK DIED AND BEFORE MY MOM AND I DROWNED IN A BURNING FERRY IN THE COOL TANNIN-TINTED GUAVIARE RIVER, IN EAST-CENTRAL COLOMBIA, WITH FORTY-TWO LOCALS WE HADN'T YET MET. IT WAS A CLEAR AND EYEBLUE DAY, THAT DAY, AS WAS THE FIRST DAY OF THIS STORY, A FEW YEARS AGO IN JANUARY, ON CHICAGO'S NORTH SIDE, IN THE OPULENT SHADOW OF WRIGLEY AND WITH THE WIND COMING LOW AND SEARCHING OFF THE JAGGED HALF-FROZEN LAKE. I WAS INSIDE, VERY WARM, WALKING FROM DOOR TO DOOR.

Makes you want to get in there, right? And the first few pages carry the same momentum. Two twenty-something buddies are trying to arrange to fly around the world in a week and give away $32, 000 in the process. Never mind why. At this point, you’re too caught up in figuring out routes and time zones and datelines to care about anything but the rush of phone calls and other arrangements. Eggers provides hints of the why’s of course, vague foreshadowings, and this makes the urgency of the situation all the more compelling.
Once the journey begins, however, the book degenerates into a mishmash of psuedointellectual psuedophilosophy and painfully lame attempts at humor. Many of the pair’s adventures seem like outtakes from a Dumb and Dumber movie (We’re now driving with our tongues. What a gas!!!) and the TV series Jackass (jumping from a moving car onto a moving donkey cart).
The protagonist is in a lot of physical and emotional pain and had my sympathy, though it seemed it was about time the got over it, until the interpolation of a commentary about halfway through the book from his partner, who said that the beating he said he received never happened and that his tragically dead friend never existed. I guess the friend was supposed to represent some good and innocent part of himself over which he would grieve endlessly, but I lost the little interest I had left in his plight right then. The rest of the book was a combination of skim and a trudge for me.
Eggers has made significant contributions to the American literary scene as the founder of McSweeney’s, and his first published work, a memoir entitled A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius was a finalist for a non-fiction Pulitzer, so he’s no slouch as an editor and a literary force. I hate to dis someone of his caliber, but YSKOV just did not find the right audience when it fell into my hands.

There is just too much in this story that did not really made any sense, which prevented me from really getting into the book.

Also the characters are maddingly frustratings, but that is no reason to dislike a book.

Also this book seemed extremely white somehow

I think mainly two stars because the story did not seem really thought-through.