The Review of Contemporary Fiction
Eunoia by Christian BökJames Crossley
Christian Bök. Eunoia. Coach House, 2001. 105 pp. Paper: $16.95.
The obvious temptation in reviewing Eunoia is to compose some cute sentences that mimic its style (not to worry, Christian Bök won’t be suffering that indignity here). This, of course, is because Eunoia is a brief novel (or long poem) comprising five chapters, each of which is univocally lipogrammatic: “Goons who shoot folks knock down doors, storm control rooms. Bronx cops do crowd control. Corps of shock-troops cordon off two blocks of shops to look for kooks who concoct knock-off bombs.” As if laboring under this restriction weren’t enough of a feat, Bök has employed virtually every word in the English language (and some from other tongues) that fits his parameters. Eunoia’s extensive vocabulary wasn’t derived with the aid of a computerized dictionary search, which explains why it was seven years in the making. While there may still be some readers who find this an insufficient pretext to justify even these few large-margined pages, they’d be remiss in overlooking them. Given the considerable historical body of experimental literature that gives a context to this work—Georges Perec and the Oulipo can’t go unmentioned—its premise is no more of a gimmick than a plot where boy meets girl. Even the least felicitous of Bök’s sentences has appeal as something no one will ever read under any other circumstances, and the best build on each other until they convince the reader that all other kinds of writing are anarchy. The quality of this work is so high that it’s a shame to focus solely on its form; it deserves a perversely oblivious critic blind to its technical achievements. Maybe it’s only years from now, when we’ve all been inspired to try our hand at linguistic gymnastics like these, that Bök’s language and the time he’s spent “divining its implicit tricks” will truly be appreciated. [James Crossley]