Christian Bök Profile

The Times Online offers a profile of author Christian Bök, whose novel Eunoia might win the award for most challenging writing constraint ever successfully implemented:

Each chapter uses only one vowel. Not one vowel once, but the same vowel over and over again, in real words that are almost never repeated, formed into real sentences with real meaning.

Force language through this horrifying meat grinder, season with ribald Canadian wit (not an oxymoron, as it turns out), and you get sentences such as this: “Slick pimps, bribing civic kingpins, distill gin in stills, spiking drinks with illicit pills which might bring bliss.” Or this: “Porno shows folks lots of sordor - zoom-shots of Bjorn Borg's bottom or Snoop Dogg's crotch.”

The article also details what is a simply incredible work ethic:

And the work itself? Get this: He read the 1.5 million-word, three-volume Webster's College Dictionary from beginning to end five times over, once for each vowel, each time listing by hand every univocal word that used the vowel of the moment. That took six months. It turned out to be the easy part. Those five long lists he then sorted by parts of speech, and sorted again into topical categories. And then he tried to write with them.

And as to the myth that all serious authors are somehow freed from the bonds of labor:

Despite the critical success of his first book, a slim volume of experimental poetry called Crystallography, no one gave Bök an advance for his second.

“So I was working 40 hours a week at the special orders desk of a big Toronto bookstore. Then after that job was done I'd spend 20 or more hours a week tutoring advanced high school students in science and mathematics. Then I'd go home and work on my PhD dissertation [on the French playwright Alfred Jarry, a major influence on Monty Python] to about 11 o'clock or midnight, then I'd open the files on Eunoia and work until 4 or 5 o'clock in the morning. And I did that every day, and I did it for seven years, and I would crash at the weekends trying to recuperate. So the book was written under a lot of duress. It was a pretty black time, financially and emotionally.”

The article also has an excerpt and a link to audio of the author reading his work.

Comments

[Levi Stahl]

Jesus, I'm tired just reading about his schedule. Wow. I almost feel like I owe it to him to buy the book now because of his dedication alone.

[Izzy]

Stunt Rock.