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    You Shall Know Our Velocity: (Or, Sacrament)
    You Shall Know Our Velocity: (Or, Sacrament)
    You Shall Know Our Velocity: (Or, Sacrament)
    Audiobook11 hours

    You Shall Know Our Velocity: (Or, Sacrament)

    Written by Dave Eggers

    Narrated by Dion Graham

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    The best-selling author of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers announced himself as a literary force with this striking debut. It is the tale of two friends on a globe-trekking quest-at turns hilarious, frustrating, and heartbreaking-to give away money while grieving a painful loss. "Headlong, heartsick and footsore . Frisbee sentences that sail, spin, hover, circle and come back to the reader like gifts of gravity and grace . Nobody writes better than Dave Eggers about young men ."-New York Times Book Review
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateAug 20, 2010
    ISBN9781440792571
    You Shall Know Our Velocity: (Or, Sacrament)
    Author

    Dave Eggers

    Dave Eggers is the founder of McSweeney’s, a quarterly journal and website (www.mcsweeneys.net), and his books include You Shall Know Our Velocity, How We Are Hungry, Short Short Stories, What is the What, and the bestselling A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. His work has appeared in the New Yorker and Ocean Navigator. He is the recipient of the Addison Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was a 2001 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He lives in Northern California.

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    Reviews for You Shall Know Our Velocity

    3.5/5

    778 ratings31 reviews

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    • 3/5
      My brain is still lolling around trying to know what to make of this book. The only other time I have come away from a book and been puzzled about how I feel happened with DBC Pierre`s book Vernon God Little. In You Shall Know Our Velocity, there were moments of brilliance and also moments of mediocrity, moments I laughed out loud and moments I cringed. The style is certainly original but possibly to the detriment of the overall work.Personally, I hold Eggers and the rest of the McSweeney`s (or this group of 30 something New York literati) posse - Vendela Vida, Jonathan Safran Foer, Nicole Krauss, Claire Messud, Jonathan Lethem - in some sort of awesome esteeem and want to love everything they produce. They are an interesting and interested group of people.I am going to ponder some more and update later.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      Lack of narrative nonsensical rubbish. Why were these men trying to give away money they were just unbelievable

      1 person found this helpful

    • 1/5
      Suddenly I found I’d lost the will to finish this.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      I really wanted to like this book, but I just did not. It is not that the book is badly written or that the concept is boring (it is really quite outrageous and unique to travel around the world giving out your inheritance to those "deserving" poor), it is just that the sense of adventure that I expected from a journey around the world is missing. Maybe it's just that I expect a lot because I have travelled a lot and I find the exotic locales and peoples of this book can be and must be much more fascinating than presented in these pages.
    • 4/5
      Very cool travel story meets Brewster's Millions. I love the concept of the journey, the friendship between the main characters, and the layout of the book. Leave it to Dave Eggers to redefine how to publish a book.
    • 5/5
      I absolutely loved this book. I love Eggers period. This book kept me fascinated. I love how Eggers always makes you think that you know what is happening, only to take the story and completely flip it upside down. I loved all the themes in the books. I thought the characters had good depth and were interesting. I love how crazy Eggers is. His writing always keeps me entertained, even though once in a while I find him a bit arrogant. But maybe that’s part of why I like him so much, he can pull it off.
    • 3/5
      Will, burdened with a large inheritance, sets off round the world with his friend Hand with the aim of giving it away. Aside from the rather odd plot, the relationship between the two friends and their absurd activities make it a good read.
    • 4/5
      My first exposure to Eggers. This is REALLY well written, the pure writing. The novel itself is kind of John Barthes meets Douglas Coupland meets 'The Worlds Most Dangerous Places'. I was disappointed in that the author kept returning to a depressing and morbid event that the main characters had to emotionally deal with - what could or should have been 10% of the content was like 30% of the content. It became annoying. I suspect either people into emotional work, grieving and resolution and friend memories of high-school will like half this book; the other half will like the main story/travel story. The talent here is amazing. The writing style kind of reminds me also of Vonnegut sans science fiction for some reason - not sure why. I am really looking forward to another Eggers book.
    • 5/5
      Charming, though insubstantial novel. Entertaining story of a "road trip" by a privileged and thoughtful American Gen-X'er. The hardcover edition is very attractive.
    • 3/5
      I laughed, I cried. Well worth the journey.
    • 2/5
      I had some problems with this book. I certainly did not come away with the impression that Eggers is a good writer. I will make a big delineation here between good writing and funny writing. Most people mistake one for the other because being funny is not easy, but being funny, quirky, or otherwise hipsterish doesn't make you good at what you do. Doesn't make you bad either, but the likelihood increases simply at the effort to be popular.

      Eggers' narrative is swift and humorous, but not cutting, inviting, insightful, or even all that interesting. And all that is aside from his inability to tell an interesting story.

      My major problem was with the voice of the character. Will is supposed to be an idiot. If not an idiot then painfully common, yet he comes up with these poetic musings and these colorations that simply would not run through the mind of such a common character.

      Through the whole thing I kept thinking that Eggers was just trying to show us how cute he could be, like that idiot Zooey Deshanal (sp?) who just looks as if she's so impressed with how cute she is. I'm really not down with this kind of loose, plain-speech narrative that passes as great literature nowadays. Everyone talks like this, what is so special about writing it down if the character doesn't have anything special about them? What exactly is there to read about here?

      The conflict was loose, the characters unremarkable, the voice funny at times but mostly square and depressing, and the story ... what story? The only thing I wanted to was how he died (This is on the first page, no spoiler here) and Eggers didn't even get to it. Fucking lame, man.

      I do not recommend this book. It'll be a while before Eggers gets another 20 dollar bill out of me. I'm just not into Hipster-Lit. If you are, great, but lets not go handing out Pulitzers over it.

    • 4/5
      The story of two friends who travel to arbitrary places around the world at breakneck speed, in the attempt to give away $80,000 to random people they deem deserving. Eggers is both funny and profound; his style is uniquely his own but a mix of Twain and Joyce comes to mind as I try to put my finger on it. Quotes:On innocence:"It had to be those kids. Only the most blessed of little people yells hello across an empty field to strangers with dirty clothes."On perspective in traveling:"I had been on a plane! A tiny percentage of all those who'd ever lived would ever be on an airplane...""To travel is selfish - that money could be used for hungry stomachs and you're using it for your hungry eyes...""We were done. No Cairo. No sunrise at Cheops. And from now on, there would never be options, never like this again. Lord this was obscene. We should have saved the money, most of it, invested it, so there would always be more. I could have done this every year if I had planned it better. I planned nothing well. I dreaded being back in Chicago, or Memphis, wherever - the stasis, the slow suffocation of accumulation."On mad beauty:"Oh to live among peacocks. I'd seen them once in person and they defied so many laws of color and gravity that they had to be mad geniuses waiting to take over everything."On knowledge:"That Hand didn't know more about Morocco - that it was green, for starters - demonstrated the great gaps in knowledge that occur when one gets most of one's information from the Internet.""You know nothing until you're there. Nothing. Nothing nothing nothing. You know nothing of another person, nothing of another place. Nothing nothing nothing.""We knew nothing; the gaps in our knowledge were random and annoying. They were potholes - they could be patched but they multiplied without pattern or remorse. And even if we knew something, had read something, were almost sure of something, we wouldn't ever know the truth, or come anywhere close to it. The truth had to be seen. Anything else was a story, entertaining but more embroidered fib than crude, shapeless fact.""Anyway, I read news and look for and collect facts because so far they haven't added up anything. I had pictured, as a younger man, that the things I knew and woiuld know were bricks in something that woiuld, effortlessly, eventually, shape itself into something recognizable, meaningful. A massive and spiritual sort of geometry - a ziggurat, a pyramid. But here I am now, so many years on, and if there is a shape to all this, it hasn't revealed itself. But no, thus far the things I know grow out, not up, and what might connect all these things, connective tissues or synapses, or just some sense of order, doesn't exist, or isn't functioning, and what I knew at twenty-seven can't be found now."On the human condition:"The only infallible truth of our lives is that everything we love in life will be taken from us.""We had beaten death yet again and we were now beating sleep and it would seem like we could do without either forever. And I then would have the idea, seeming gloriously true for a flickering moment, that we all should have a near-death experience weekly, twice weekly - how much we'd get done! The clarity we'd know!""When we pass by another person without telling them we love them it's cruel and wrong and we all know this. We live in a constant state of denial and imbalance.""The water was not God. The water undulating slightly with the waves unformed was not spiritual. It was jagged cold water, and it felt perfect when we put our hand into it, and it kissed our palms again and again, would never stop kissing our palms - and why wasn't that enough?"Just funny:"I could smell me. Not a bad smell, not yet, but a distinct one, one with something to say.""Hand burst from the bathroom like he'd been feeding bears and they'd turned on him. His own stink had overtaken him and now threw itself around the room.""This was the day Hand announced, while eating fries and mayonnaise for lunch, that in his opinion, a great shit was better than bad sex, a view that was seconded by my mom, which just about killed Jack.""Passing a middle-aged couple in matching jackets:- You two need to change.- What? Why? the middle-aged couple said, to my head, in my head.- Because you are wearing the same jacket.- We brought them while on vacation in Newport.- You must be hidden from view.- The jackets are nice.- They are not nice. Think of the children.""All of Senegal and beyond attainable, Senegal! - and with Huey Lewis on the local radio, coming through with stunning clarity: 'Do You Believe in Love?' ....Janet Jackson was tinkling from the speakers, asking what we had done for her as of late.""I could smell his breath, worlds contained within.""In the center of the city center, in the dead-middle of all Dakar's traffic, the car died. Hand jumped into the driver's seat to start it. Nothing. The honking was first insane and soon symphonic."
    • 4/5
      Really well written book that sticks with you long after you've put it down. Not a lot happens in the book as our protagonist tries to give away a large sum of money in places throughout the world to alleviate his guilt. But the prose and imagery make the book worth reading. This book made me an Eggers fan. Recommend if you are looking for a literary (and weighty) read.
    • 3/5
      I really enjoyed Eggers writing style, the flow of the story, and the characters. However, I was left unsatisfied as I strolled through the last pages of the book. I'm not sure what I was wanting, but whatever it was, it was not what he gave me. The struggle of WAITING when all you really needed was to move is a part of the book that I felt deeply connected with. They had to hustle, they didn't have the capacity to plan, and had to reconcile this with their urgency for movement and purpose. It was a little bit of a paradox that I felt was unresolved by the end of the book, and would have made the book quite powerful if it had been. Eggers writing was beautiful, however, and I would like to read his first book/memoir.
    • 1/5
      I got too angry when I reached the part around the middle of the book when when it was revealed that the preceding story of one of the characters was made up.
    • 3/5
      This Eggers' book is similar in style to his first novel "Work of Genius...etc, etc." To me it wasn't as fulfilling as that book was but I still enjoyed the plot in which the hero of the story wants to leave a positive mark on the world by following his heart and his unbreakable lust for adventure. YSKOV provides the reader with a great sense of freedom as the characters end up in a new country nearly every day of this story constantly seeking to improve the lives of random people in each place. Also, it was really cool to learn about the note "YSKOV" left by the indigenous peoples as a threat toward the invading armies in S. America.
    • 4/5
      This is the second book I've read by Dave Eggers and, while they are vastly different books, I had the same reaction to both of them: awe, confusion, contemplation and annoyance.You Shall Know Our Velocity! is a book with an authentic personality, and one in which I was engaged in an abusive love affair. I rolled my eyes at many parts, was angry at some and felt my mouth drop open in shock at others. I felt betrayed, I felt hopeful, I fell in love and when it was all over, I felt both bitter and wiser as a result of having read it.You can read other reviews for details on the plot – but I wish you wouldn't. There were so many surprises in here, both in plot and in the development of characters. I went into this book with no idea what it was about and I believe my experience to be richer as a result.This is not a book that everyone will enjoy. But if you are a person who lets literature touch your life and who looks to books as a way to journey through the life of another, then I believe you will cherish this book as much as I did.
    • 5/5
      This was certainly a very different literary experience. One I wanted to read quite slowly because I had the feeling I may never read anything quite like it again. The basis of the plot is original to say the least - two zany guys (who under happier circumstances would probably be halfway up a mountain extreme-ironing or something like that) decide to go round the world, but one of them can only get a week off work so it has to be done in double quick time. And the other has just earned a staggering amount of money for doing very little work, and wants to give it away to the needy. So off they go in search of poor people.The book can be enjoyed on various different levels. It's very funny pretty much all the way through - and doesn't mind poking fun at the characters' limited world view (What? No direct flights from Greenland to Rwanda? What is the world coming to?). Lots of opportunities, too, for laughs on a worldwide scale. I liked the way Qatar's requirement for a visa that took a week to process was described as 'a ludicrous display of hubris for a country the shape and size of a thumb'.I'm inclined not to mention where the characters do end up going, though, because another thing I enjoyed about the book is the 'mystery tour' element. Everyone knows it isn't possible to see the world in a week because....well, air travel just doesn't work like that. As is the case throughout the book, reality crowds in on the characters' wacky world, and what actually happens is a very believable and yet quite breathtaking dash through just a few of the countries that literature usually passes by.The book has a serious side, of course, and aside from the recent death of their friend which has left them traumatised, the characters experience unexpected difficulties offloading their cash. Thought provoking issues are raised - like the difficulties of being rich when you didn't ask to be, and the way in which charity almost always comes across as condescending. Symbolic parallels with Western economies are easily drawn. This said, some of the scenes involving the giving of cash are comedy classics - the soda bottle incident was worth five stars on its own.All in all, a great read. After all, how many people get the chance to go careering headlong around the world attempting to tape money to donkeys? Probably not many, and this book is the next best thing.
    • 4/5
      I read it because I read a great book review on the book and was looking for a new author. I read a previous book by Eggers, which I loved, so I had high expectations for this book. I'm not saying it was BAD, because parts of it were a joy to read, but toward the end of the book, I was ready for it to be over.
    • 5/5
      A book about friendship, grief, life, and imagination, this is a whirlwind journey across countries in the company of two unique (and yet believable) twenty-somethings who are just beginning to come to grips with the world around them. Eggers delivers on perfect dialogue, one moment humorous and one moment heartbreaking, with believable and realistic affections and emotions. Some may read this, and say that they're too off the wall to be real, but I'd vouch that no, these characters are right off the street of contemporary America, no more lost or centered than plenty of people I've known, with thoughts that are not more crazy, but are delivered here perfectly and realistically.This isn't the traditional novel--it comes together like a slowly building mystery that you never realized was a mystery, and it drives at every motion you have along the way. This book may not be for everyone, but I can't recommend it highly enough (to anyone) if you want a solid fast-moving read that's worth your while, if you allow it to make you think about what you're reading and take it seriously (when it asks you to) for even a moment.
    • 5/5
      There are two important twists to this story – twists I can tell you about that won’t be spoilers – and they are what makes this book so good. The first is in the book itself. The second is in the way the book has been published.The book starts with an affectation that can easily set the reader off the rest of a book. “Everything within takes place after Jack died and before Mom and I drowned…” Shy of Sunset Boulevard, this is almost impossible to pull off. Don’t worry, Eggers has a plan (or eventually got a plan – remember those twists?). The narrator is Will who, with Hand, is traveling around the world in a few days trying to give away $32,000 and then get to Mexico in time for a friend’s wedding. They are trying to find just the right people, and they are struggling for the trip to go the way they want. At the most surface level, the story tells how their plans change, how they adapt, and how they continue. However, the trip itself is really an attempt by Will to address or forget things from the past. We learn that (as is indicated in the introduction) his friend Jack has died. He has also been the victim of a severe beating. His face still healing, he feels he is being stared at or avoided. The trip is (as would be expected) an internal and external exploration. And it is moving along nicely. Will and Hand have there problems, are only slightly likeable, but we have learned to care about them.Then, about two-thirds of the way through the book, Hand takes over the narration. He is writing after the first publication of the book and is expressing his frustration because, apparently the book it isn’t one hundred per cent true. His revelations cast the entire story in a new framework, and what we thought we were beginning to understand about the people and the story has to be re-evaluated.Which got me to wondering. There are references to other titles in Hand’s sidetrack. I had already noticed the cover of this paperback edition included a note that the edition included significant changes and additions. Further, the title page indicated the name of the book had been previously retitled as Sacrament. Interesting choice of words – “retitled”. Was this a case of the author building these clues in the actual book – building in the question of which was reality and which was the novel? So I explored more and found that the hard back was issued without the insert from Hand. What had this book been before? And what was it meant to be now?So an interesting story gets turned on its ear in two different ways. Reading the insert from Hand with the knowledge that Eggers had actually changed the focus of what he had written (and was even confessing through Hand) kept me thinking at two and three different levels throughout the rest of the book.In the end, the $32,000 is all given away and Will makes it to Mexico on time. But trying to determine which reality exists in this fiction, and re-exploring these characters through each revelation adds a texture and complexity to this book that, one, I do not think could have existed in the original and, two, raises this book to a level above most others.
    • 5/5
      If you are not yet desensitised, by visual and audio entertainment, to the value of humour in prose narrative, this book will be hilarious. As for me, Velocity was strikingly amusing rather than outright hilarious. There is the occasional picture as well, which serves to compliment the humour. Most of the humour that exists in this book is based around the characters’ strange motivations, which are completely arbitrary and whimsical. Deciding to swing from tree to tree in a Latvian forest is but one strange example.The characters are in no way stereotypical and neither is the strange plot. Two guys in their late twenties lose a close friend, come into a great deal of money and decide to embark on a week long journey around the world depositing money into the hands of strangers. What follows is a number of strange encounters with many different cultures where social conventions are arbitrarily abandoned and the reader instantly questions the sanity of the two main characters.A story about Will’s mental struggles and Hand’s social extravagances, Velocity may bring to mind experiences you have had. Much of the dialogue goes on within Will’s head as he struggles to come to terms with his position in the world. This forces the reader to relate to, or at least attempt to understand, Will’s strange motivations to travel the world handing out money he believes he doesn’t deserve. Eggers’ style is provocative and unconventional, bumpy and always inviting the reader to wonder what on earth he is on about, only to explain 10 or 15 pages later. He employs the bunch-of-words-strung-together-to-make-a-new-word style that is characteristic of the contemporary American authors I have read, which gives the impression that he has a limited vocabulary and annoys me but is a minor detail that has not prevented me from enjoying this whacky tale.All in all, Velocity is like nothing I have ever read before – which is both good and bad. It is good because it kept me wanting to find out what would happen next. It was bad because some of the ideas within were extremely abstract. I don’t mind abstract but sometimes Eggers went too far. But don’t take my word for it, find out for yourself.This review was originally published in On Dit, the student newspaper of Adelaide University.
    • 2/5
      There are a handful of rather beautifully composed sentences and passages in this book. However, it the majority of it reads as a manuscript with potential; lacking an editor's tutelage.

      The writing, unfortunately, evokes my perception of prototypical "Gen-X" writing: lack of articulation, faux cleverness, and mis-executed ambiguity.
    • 4/5
      Not quite as good as staggering heartbreak - but still a good read
    • 5/5
      Though this book was scathingly reviewed by some, I found it to be the usual, refreshing Eggers fare. There were parts that I thought could have used cutting, but the main characters, Will and Hand, were both excellent presences that I got used to having around.Will's experience in the storage unit and his feelings about his relationship with both Jack and Hand helped make this story what it is. I also liked Mo and Thor.
    • 2/5
      Alright, this wasn't my kind of book. I see how people can like it, and it did have an effect on me at times, but I just wasn't crazy about it.
    • 4/5
      Y.S.K.O.V. tells the story of the narrator, Will, and his friend Hand as they try to give away $32,000 while traveling around the world in a week. The money was a windfall from a commercial enterprise and both friends feel this is the best way to use the money after the death of a good friend. Like AHWOSG, Eggers is a master of the subtle revelations in his sloppy prose. Confessions and details often come in strange places and hold together well in the overall context of the story. Unfortunately, the story does not come together as well and there are large sections of introspection which are not as interesting as the rest of the story is. However, the actual story is quite entertaining and shows Eggers at his best.
    • 1/5
      A rare thing here - a book I couldn't face finishing and gave up two thirds through. Put me off reading for a while in fact. Maybe something happened nearer the end that would have made it worthwhile, but I hated everything about it! Bland writing, no engaging characters, no engaging descriptive/emotional content, no intersting world view etc... nothing really. Maybe just too much of an american take ont this to translate to europe, or maybe just not my cup of tea. I loved Egger's microstories he wrote for the Guardian a while back though.
    • 3/5
      Not as strong as Dave Eggers' other books, but I found it an entertaining read, and I really identified with the internal dialog the main character gets into with himself.
    • 5/5
      Brilliant novel. Eggers is a brilliant writer and this novel is just beautiful. One of those stories that makes you wish you could become one of the many characters that find their way into the story.