stop counterculturalism now

While on The Trip I read a novel, You Shall Know Our Velocity! by Dave Eggers. I really enjoyed it. At the same time, I am having trouble sorting out if the paperback version I read even had this supposed 50-page addition that changes the interpretation of the entire novel! And I think my experience may not even matter to anyone else because I was interpreting the entire work based on certain assumptions about the characters that I am not sure were accurate. If only I could find someone who has read both versions, or is willing to tell me what the 50-page addition (which I am pretty sure I read) actually illuminated for the reader. Who was this Hand fellow? Or wait, was it Jack?

Comments by other people haven't helped me sort this out:

I feel that in theory I should read and enjoy Mr. Eggers, but i became entangled in a sixteen-comma chainwreck in a David Foster Wallace novel a couple months back and have become unable to wander the land of Mad Genius since.

Eggers doesn't come near to the textual pyrotechnics practiced by DFW. Now there's a 'mad genius' for you. I think I realized he was just a bunch of hot air when, while struggling through Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, I discovered that one piece was just a series of footnotes embedded within footnotes embedded within footnotes, ad nauseum, until you start bleeding from the eyes. Eggers, to his credit, never writes a sentence that will last an entire chapter. DFW does just because he can.

Eggers goes down easy, like warm milk. DFW is a mile-long row of tequila shots by comparison.

p.s. um, Egger's own a pirate supply store in San Francisco. ???