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Document Type

Article

Abstract

[First paragraph]

Dave Eggers' recent novel, You Shall Know Our Velocity (2002), concerns two friends who suddenly stumble upon a lot of money, feel guilty about it, and travel around the world trying to give it away. Like almost all of what Eggers is involved in producing, Velocity is profoundly self-justifying. In fact, if we follow Gerard Genette's model and understand a work's paratexts to be all the physical and social texts that attend its existence, controlling its dissemination and reception, then Velocity thematizes paratextuality and practices it, as a text about Eggers' career and his overriding concern with the idea of "selling out." As a work it acts to police the reception of future works and control the way we read Eggers' position in the literary marketplace. Through a brief description of some of the major aspects of Eggers' career, and a focus on the way that career has involved the establishment of a safe position both within and outside of the contemporary corporatized literary marketplace, Velocity can be read as Eggers' ultimate effort to find a way to deny motivation by financial capital while avoiding associating himself with a kind of cultural elitism that assumes the paucity of mass culture. This effort provides readers with a lens through which to view Eggers' editorial investments and future textual production. Yet despite Eggers' attempt to make the narrative work on his behalf, by suggesting his commitment to some larger social interests, the novel nonetheless comes to exemplify the peculiar way in which Eggers' entire career is built circularly on reflections on itself, and the seeming impossibility of escaping such solipsism.

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