You Shall Know Our Velocity

Dave Eggers’ writing is the literary equivalent of spreading a canvas on some grass, weighting each corner with stones, climbing a ladder, then splashing down bucketfuls of paint (lapis lazuli, crimson and jade), descending and having a nap while it dries, before expertly chipping off the ugly globs with a tiny file. You Shall Know Our Velocity is the kind of book that probably gets up and goes about its private business when you leave the room. It definitely wins all manner of silent arguments with your other novels while you are sleeping.

Following the unexpected death of their friend Jack, Will and Hand set out from Milwaukee, determined to give away $38,000 in cash in one week. The conditions of their round the world airfare require them to move west, without backtracking. The need to keep moving in order to make it back in time, and the vagaries of visas and time zones get in the way pretty much immediately. It’s also much harder than anticipated to give away so much money, because of course they can’t give it to just anyone. It has to feel right.

This is a book that understands the pain of being simultaneously confronted with the size of the world and the limitations of being allocated only one life. What about all the other lives you could live! The places you could go and things you could do, with more time. ‘We’d have a motherfucking shitload of dogs! Horses. Peacocks. 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.’

Whatever you do, do not make the mistake of thinking that this novel has no strong emotional base. This writing is modern, self-assured and cool. But this is more than an empty display of technical ability. It is much more than a diversion from everyday life, despite its capacity to entertain with its streetsmart humour and to delight with well-placed departures from orthodoxy. Eggers is not afraid to get close to the edge of the most frightening craters that we peer into while alone in the dark, alone in our own heads.

As in subsequent works like A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and the more recent Zeitoun, he does not skirt around death, guilt or anger. Here is a writer with honesty, heart and the ability to write it all. You should read this book. But that isn’t why you’ll read it. You’ll read it, in a hurry, because you won’t be able to stop yourself.

Zuleika Dobson: Or an Oxford Love Story

Oh Zuleika! What can be done about her? Apparently, not very much. Zuleika Dobson is Max Beerbohm’s only novel and was published in 1911. (It doesn’t appear frequently in bookshops but can be found online with relative ease.) Zuleika Dobson is an orphan, a former governess and a mediocre conjurer. This doesn’t stop the adorable young woman from breaking hearts from every stage on which she appears in Europe and America. Unfortunately for Miss Dobson, the scores of men who dote on her are missing the one thing she requires: the appearance of not loving her at all.

The thing is, Zuleika simply can’t bring herself to love a man who grovels at her feet. This seems about to change when she goes to stay with her elderly uncle, the Warden of Judas College, Oxford. Of course, heads turn and new devotees assemble the moment she alights at Oxford station. But Zuleika hadn’t reckoned on the Duke of Dorset, easily Oxford’s most eligible bachelor. So determined is he not to fall in love with any of the young women who had always been so determined to woo him, the Duke assumes a frosty manner and rebuffs all of Zuleika’s early advances. All too soon, however, Zuleika begins to exert her usual potent magic and the Duke’s heart is lost. Naturally, this means Zuleika must fall out of love with him as quickly as she fell into it. In an attempt to demonstrate his boundless affection, the Duke declares his intention of taking his own life. As soon as this fact becomes generally known, every other undergraduate in the university vows to follow his fine example.

This is a good story, lightly written and often humorous. It does have the distinct feel of a very long and convoluted inside joke – perhaps it was intended for a certain type of Oxford alumnus. This doesn’t detract from the enjoyment of others, but gives the sense that the enjoyment would be increased for anyone with personal experience of the University. Zuleika Dobson shimmers with wit and rare words, as if Beerbohm had written the whole thing while giving a quiet chuckle, and the dictionary open beside him. While it is amusing, the novel lacks any real variation in tone or pitch. It is a good book, which, with some careful editing, could have been half as long and twice as good.

‘Bright eyes, light feet – she trod erect from a vista whose glare was dazzling to all beholders. She swept among them, a miracle, overwhelming, breath-bereaving. Nothing at all like her had ever been seen in Oxford.’

In Cold Blood

Many books are called ‘compelling’ and this one deserves to be. In Cold Blood is an extraordinarily well-structured and carefully paced work of what has been called ‘novelistic journalism’. Truman Capote has his readers absolutely in his control from start to finish.

The book opens by introducing us to the Clutter family, four members of which were murdered in their home in Kansas in 1952. Allowing the reader to grow to like these immensely likeable people is necessary to the story’s emotional force. It is necessary in order to communicate the magnitude of the crimes and the horror of them.

This is not a detective story. The reader learns very early in the narrative who committed the crimes. Rather, the scenes unfold in chronological order from multiple vantage points, the result of six years of dedicated research on the part of the author. Knowing the outcome of the police investigation in advance somehow does not detract from the suspense of following it at a distance. The ability to describe the crime and its consequences in such detail give it a weighty reality that is often sickening.

Capote goes to great lengths to describe the backgrounds of those who committed these crimes, an approach which allows each of us to draw our conclusions about the causes of crime in any society. What the book does very successfully is to demonstrate the futility of capital punishment for the deterrence of at least some serious crimes. This is because the crimes were committed by persons in the knowledge that if they were to be caught, they would likely hang. Without making any pronouncement on the efficacy of the criminal justice system of the time, Capote leaves room to cast it into doubt. What punishment can be appropriate for anyone involved in the murder of an innocent family, when nothing can give them any comfort or redress? What is the alternative?

That Capote took six years to write the book is proof of his conviction that the story was worth exploring, and worth writing well. He was right.