Review: Christian Bok’s Eunoia

Any draftsman can craft a stanza that has charm, madcap drama and angst. A paragraph that has a phantasmal lack–that’s hard; that’s art. What man can balk at a small tract that has that phantasmal lack as a standard hallmark?

Remember Perec? The esteemed verses he erected seem perfect, yet when we see them we never detect the letter “E”. These perverse excesses were Perec’s clever pen-sketches’ essence; whenever we remember the French esthete, we stress the deft new schemes he perfected.

The verses here resemble Perec’s, yet the rejected letter never rests. Every verse deletes preselected letters. See: when we pen these sentences here, we prefer “E”, then we bring in “I”.

This skill–writing within rigid limits–instills strict thinking. If I mimic it, it is simply this strict firm will I find inspiring.

His striking wit–bringing in lists, hissing-fits, sick skits–highlights intrinsic, primitivistic insights. Is it nihilistic? Critics might dismiss its childish wit, its diminishing tricks. Still, this is criticism which I find glib.

Most shops don’t stock Bok’s book. Not York’s old bookshops. Most fools who look for Bok’s book go from shop to shop, lost.

Folks who work on Bok know Bok’s word-control. Two sorts of words: common comfort words; odd, old, shopworn words. Most of Bok’s words look odd. Too short? Too long? No, not too long. Sort of, oh, loss. Folks who work on lots of books, who know how to control words, know loss.

Such stuff Dunn spun. But Dunn’s stunts u-turn, succumb.

Sum up: truth thrusts us up. Thus, Kunst.