"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Flying from Chicago, these twenty-something, philanthropic Phileas Foggs (Generation Y's Bob and Bing, in fact) hope to start their odyssey in Greenland and finish on the top of Cheops pyramid in Egypt. Of course bad weather, visa regulations, the intransigence of airline authorities and "the unmitigated slowness of moving from place to place" consistently thwart their plans. ("Should we not have teleporting by now?" an exasperated Will asks at one point.) Journeying to Senegal through Morocco and onto Estonia and Latvia, the hapless duo devise increasingly bizarre means to, arbitrarily, hand money to needy locals. They try to pin wads of notes onto goats, over-tip pole dancers, hire cabs for minute distances and create a "real treasure" hunt, replete with map.
There is a curious unreality about how Will and Hand interact with the people they meet. Like Eggers and his younger brother Toph in A Heartbreaking Work, they've retreated into a kind of male adolescent fantasy bubble where the world is a largely a game for their own amusement. The idea of rich yanks dolling out cash willy nilly is, as Eggers is well aware, itself slightly tasteless. The narrative is however, almost mercilessly, metacritical--Will's every worry, doubt, and guilty reflection is taken to its nth degree. Eggers' self-ironising style is as infuriating and as beguiling as ever, but this is a far less tricksy book than his memoir. There are fewer typographical gimmicks and, while it would be impossible ever to describe Eggers' prose as restrained, his writing is less ostentatious here and for that reason all the more impressive. It's simply a quite startling and occasionally tender piece of work, buzzing with annoyingly magnificent sentences, ideas and jokes. --Travis Elborough
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Book Description Soft Cover. Condition: new. Seller Inventory # 9781400033546
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. An entertaining and profoundly original (San Francisco Chronicle) moving and hilarious tale of two friends who fly around the world trying to give away a lot of money and free themselves from a profound loss. From the bestselling author of The Circle.Nobody writes better than Dave Eggers about young men who aspire to be, at the same time, authentic and sincere. The New York Times Book Review "You Shall Know Our Velocity! is the work of a wildly talented writer. Like Kerouac's book, Eggers's could inspire a generation as much as it documents it." LA Weekly After acquiring $32,000, Will and Hand, devastated over the death of their closest friend, travel around the world giving away the money, in this novel from the author of 'A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius'. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9781400033546
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