Eunoia by Christian Bok

“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.”

Fuck me. How's that for a bracing work ethic.

Read about it here.

jambo said:

Interesting, a gimmick but take a folly far enough. Reading the extracts it has a sort of incantatory effect, becomes hard to follow the actual meaning if you don't pay close attention. Also comes across as a kind of pseudo-qabbalistic inquiry into hidden correspondences in language. I guess that would be inherent in the conceit and the project but probably has more than a little to do with the author's concerns as well. Sort of James Joyce meets Dr. Seuss or something.

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Sorry Jambo, your response slipped by.

Yes, a gimmick, reading the extracts I thought it was cack to be honest, but then I've never really warmed to the sort of Perec/Oulipo type word play it continues on from.

As op/ed what impressed me, entirely, was the work schedule. Fear, fascination, and skepticism are all evoked. Upon closer examination it will likely turn out he spent most of the day sleeping behind his desk or some such other 'get out of work ploy'. But if it turns out to be true, then I'm struck by someone whose capacities so far exceed mine - or anyone I know, for that matter. Alien.

jambo said:

A good helping of self mythologising no doubt. But if you are driven and involved in projects you can fit together it can happen.

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For 7 years?! I'm not saying he's pulling it but that level of industry is nearly incredible. As in barely. I went through architecture school which encouraged obsessive activity to complete projects. Even the most serial all nighters never got past a few 4/5 or so without looking crazed and about to crack.

Still he might have done exactly as claimed.

A monomaniacal obsessive undertaking but I reckon it just might have produced a revealing dissection of hidden structures and patterns in the language. There is something of the old school occult practice about it, especially with the focus on the resonant sounds. Wonder if he'll publish the list of words?

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I doubt 'a revealing dissection of hidden structures and patterns in language' except perhaps in some broader sense. (language as consciousness or some such) Its more the mad pedantry of an engineer. That's what's cool about it, if anything is. The performance. The process, the work, the compulsive behavior. I think you're totally right about its occult aspect: from the late night toil, to the obsessive technics, to the incantatory nature of the repetitive soundings. Mad intensity contained. I'm almost up for a read. Almost.

Edit: I don't know where I got the idea he's an engineer. His Phd and work in a bookstore suggests your usual literary type. I think he qualified as an engineer initially.