Sacrament (Know Previously as You Shall Know Our Velocity) [signed]

The Alternative Version of the author's debut novel. Called "Hand's Revised Edition", this is, in effect, a new work, not just another edition as some have called it. Limited Edition of 2000 signed copies. Hard boards with the first paragraph of the novel on the cover, as issued. Text by Dave Eggers. Without DJ, as issued. Eggers' novel is, in many ways, a further exploration of the themes of his breakthrough memoir, "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius". Eggers's ears are keenly attuned to the malaise as well as the redeeming possibilities of contemporary American life. Not surprisingly, he is also a convincingly charming, playful, self-styled iconoclast who, in this book and in his McSweeney's Quarterlies Series, is clearly making fun of collectors: Their obsession with a book's condition and the very notion of "first edition". The book is deliberately produced as a cheap book (but beautifully so, with handsome red cloth spine) and two editions were published simultaneously, one with and one without the indication, "First Edition". Now comes yet another version: "This one is about 60 pages longer, the added pages having been written by the book's other primary character, Hand. His insertion, which occurs two-thirds of the way through the book, in many ways refutes the way the story was originally told. The new version of the book has a new title and many more photographs, all in color" (Publisher's blurb). Ironically, all this Rashomon-style variant storytelling has made the book and Dave Eggers much more collectible than it or he would have been had he followed hallowed publishing conventions. A work of staggering ambition. © 2005, ModernRare.com