Youth and Young Manhood

I just finished reading the Dave Eggers’ novel You Shall Know Our Velocity. I didn’t enjoy it as much as I did his first, but there were still moments I got goosebumps from the literary genius that is Mr. Eggers. Here are a few parts that most impacted me:

“Not the first world,” she continued, “the world we are from, not the second or third world, so many people treading water. This is different. The fourth world is voluntary. It is quick small steps from the other worlds.”

“Everyone is sleeping and we are here, in the sea. That is the fourth world. The fourth world is present and available. It’s this close. But it’s different. It’s passive. We are make the action here. We come and then we create things that will happen. The fourth world is half thought, half actual. It’s a staging ground.” 

His idea was this would be an experiment and would make its way onto the page unadorned. That was why we didn’t sleep! We were, goddamnit, trying to live a week that would be worth documenting, worth writing down, minute by minute…the idea we came up with, well before we left, was something we coined Performance Literature…what we had planned was a book conceived, then acted out, then transcribed, then ostensibly made into art.

Stasis is itself criminal for those with the means to move, and the means to weave communion between people.