Heartbreaking and Joyful

I am so happy to have finally discovered Dave Eggers' fiction. I read his memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius a few years ago and it blew me away. It lives up to its claim to be both heartbreaking and genius, which is no small feat. Here is a writer of massive talent. Almost immediately afterward, I bought his novel You Shall Know Our Velocity! and then for some reason it sat on my shelf from then until now. My fault - I should have read it long ago.

Eggers is on level with Jonathan Safran Foer, IMHO the finest writer of my generation. They both capture that elusive combination of joy and sorrow that every perfect story must. They both chronicle the grieving process in vivid, moving detail, and they both end their works with scenes of healing and redemption that don't forgive what went before, but somehow survive it. Reading their books makes me a little bit more alive for a minute, which is the point of good writing in the first place. I would be hard-pressed to sing their praises loudly enough.

Velocity! tells the story of Will and his friend Hand, who have recently lost their best friend Jack to a car accident. Will has also unwittingly come into a sum of $80,000, the result of a light bulb company appropriating his image for their packages. Will is in the depths of grief over Jack's death and his money's failure to prevent it - one of the most moving sections of the book depicts Will and Hand's attempts to get Jack from Milwaukee to Mexico for experimental spine surgery they think will save his life. It's evident from the beginning that they won't get him so far as the hospital waiting room, but they believe in it 100%, even renting a van for the trip (they are climbing out of it when Jack's mother comes out to the parking lot to break the news that Jack has passed). Following this, Will feels an irrepressible need to be rid of the money and to be far away from home. He and Hand embark on what they hope will be a multinational trip to give away as much of the money as possible. They have a week to do it.

Within this week, they travel to Senegal, Morocco, and Latvia. They manage to give away most of the money, but it doesn't go nearly as smoothly as one might think. That is one of the most compelling parts of the story, and clearly one of Eggers' themes: that differences of class and culture are much more complicated than they seem on the surface, and helping others is rarely as easy as handing them cash. Seeing a woman with a stack of coupons at the supermarket, Will thinks, "I wanted to pay this woman's difference. Two dollars she'd save and I wanted to give it to her so she could spend her time some other better way ... Since I got a little money, this was a constant struggle, the frustration with people and their coupons, people and their dirty clothes, families from El Salvador living in the basement of the church around the corner ... and my urge to buy things for them, even just their food, and my inability, due to the imagined and impossible barrier between myself and these strangers with fumbling hands, to engage them and fix things." It's clear that Will feels a measure of noblesse oblige, and this is what motivates most of his giving. However, in almost every case he and Hand wind up giving the money to someone who gave them directions, simply because it's easy. In Senegal they give money to a boy they play basketball with who really seems to need it, and then have to shake off the boy's older brother who only wants to scam them. On their way out of Latvia, they throw most of the leftover money at a deserted shantytown. At that point they're just not sure what else to do with it.

Will is a terrific character, lost in his own mind and yet somehow capable of engaging with those around him. His relationship with Hand is pitch perfect, two 27-year-old men who've yet to settle down and live up to any sort of responsibility, but who have faced great tragedy together. They clearly need and love each other, but they are also each other's worst enemies at times. Hand is the rager of the two - he acts out his pain and grief by shouting at totally innocent people. Will, rather, carries on imaginary conversations both with himself and others: "You, driving the Lexus." "Me?" "Yes, you. You paid too much." "What?" "You paid too much and your soul is soiled." "You are right. I have failed and will repent." Something about this rings so true. Everything about Will's mind does. Maybe I'm outing myself as a head case here, but the descriptions that Eggers gives for what goes on in Will's thoughts are breathtakingly vivid and felt not unlike my own thoughts at times. Will describes a library in which exists a memory of everything he's ever seen or experienced. He appreciates the ability to access these memories at will, but he is tormented by the fact that the workers in the library bring different memories to his attention without his consent. For example, a newspaper clipping about the car accident that killed Jack. Eggers perfectly captures what it's like to want desperately to stop thinking about something and not to be able to.

Any writer who aspires to do this must take his character's thoughts to the absolute limit; that is to say, eventually the character must confront God Himself. As Will thinks about Jack and how his life can be saved: "What makes you think I won’t stalk you to the corners of the earth and make you pay for this? What makes you so sure that I won’t bring it all back to you? I shall have waters of blood cast you away! I will sit upon the mount and send judgment down upon you. You shall cleave to my house! Therefore shall evil come upon thee; and mischief shall fall upon thee; thou shalt not be able to put it off: and desolation shall come upon thee suddenly, which thou shalt not know! And what shall ye say in the day of visitation, and in the desolation which shall come from below? To whom will ye flee for help? And where will ye have your glory? – Oh Lord I am spinning and wet – I will forgive you everything before if you allow us this, if you allow us this. If you should allow us this, if you should invest us with the necessary strength and then clear our path, so shall I honor thee and praise thee across the earth. But if thee shall take him away I will know vengeance – "

This is harsh, for sure. But it's also real. No one in the throes of sudden personal tragedy can entirely avoid thoughts like these. Eggers makes it that much more powerful by imitating biblical language. He turns God's own words on the man Himself, blistering with anger and pain about his circumstances and begging God to fix them. God does not, and it's clear that Eggers believes He either can't or won't. I personally disagree with this belief, but that doesn't mean I can't understand the feeling or haven't had similar thoughts. It takes guts to reproduce such thoughts on paper, but Eggers earns the right by creating such a sympathetic character in such relatable circumstances.

As I said above, any perfect story must end with a scene of healing and redemption. Here Eggers falls slightly short of Foer, but not by much. His last scene feels a bit tacked-on, but in and of itself it's a powerful one. Upon arrival back in the States, Will and Hand part ways and Will heads to Mexico for a wedding. The final scene of the book is the wedding's reception, as Will and various other characters dance and drink and revel. It's life-affirming and it reminded me of the reception scene in one of my favorite movies, Rachel Getting Married. That scene is better integrated with the overall story, but the sentiment is the same - joy and celebration in the face of pain and confusion. Until our story ends for good, that's how every story we read needs to end. It's the only we we can go on.