You Shall Know Our Velocity Eggers and Radcliffe
Dave Eggers has long been a topic of great conversation here at THinc. I’ve talked about Eggers’ book The Circle. I’ve discussed his lovely short story hear wrote for NPR that was animated, called Short Francis. I’ve wrangled Mr. Eggers in to my discussion of the Young White Guys, while discussing David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest. And I even took a peek at Egger’s book Hologram for a King. But those are the least reasons to love Eggers. The best reason to love Eggers is obviously A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. But a close second would be Eggers’ What is the What, or even better, You Shall Know Our Velocity.
You Shall know Our Velocity is Eggers’ Misery equivalent for Stephen King. Wow, that was a dense sentence. Let me try again. Do you know Stephen King’s book Misery? It was a very tightly wound and beautifully plotted book in juxtaposition to all his other sprawling wordy meandering novels. You Shall Know Our Velocity is Eggers’ Misery. It is a tightly wound and specifically plotted traveling novel with a very laser focused conceit.
The book’s premise came about when Eggers decided he wanted to give away some of the money he got from the amazing success of his freshman novel. So the general idea of the book is that two buddies decide they are going to do just that, they are going to take the money to people who really need it and give it away while traveling around the world. Eggers’ published the book himself and took an innovative turn with his first run. The book actually started on the cover. Like, literally, engraved on the cover and continued on in the inside. Not to mention the book opened brilliantly:
“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.”
Love it. Before Jack died & before my mom and I drowned in a burning ferry… What a great start. Sets up the entire story perfectly.
Now the bigger question is, will Radcliffe pull this thing off, or will he wash out? But lately Radcliffe has taken it upon himself to become the literary go to within Hollywood. Obviously Radcliffe played the Mr. Potter in one of the biggest selling book movie productions of all time. What you may not know is that he also played starring roles in the 2007 “December Boys,” based on an Australian book, a 2012 British horror movie based on the novel “The Woman in Black,” and last year’s “Kill Your Darlings,” in which he starred as poet Allen Ginsberg. Next year, Radcliffe will play Igor in a new version of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.” So hopefully he has learned enough to carry this movie.
But I recently watched from the sidelines as the production of a screenplay about David Foster Wallace hit the wall when his estate completely exploded in response to the casting choices. No, incorrect. The estate exploded about EVERYTHING. But I’m certain Eggers has been involved and supports this particular casting choice. We’ll just have to wait and see until we see for ourselves.