Chris & Andrea recently (& kindly) lent me a copy of Eunoia by Christian Bök. I hadn’t heard of the book before they handed it to me, but the author’s name sounded oddly familiar. It turns out I’m familiar with (some of) Bök’s recorded work (moreso than with his written work and) mostly because of the repeated use of Bök’s fantastic poem “Ubu Hubbub” by People Like Us in her brilliant podcast “Do or DIY” (playlists). Said podcast is also why, strangely or not, I had downloaded an mp3 of Bök reading (screaming) the poem just a couple weeks before Chris handed me Eunoia.
The book, so far, is better than awesome. Here’s a bit of explanation from the back of the book:
“Eunoia,” which means “beautiful thinking,” is the shortest English word to contain all five vowels. This book also contains them all, except that each one appears by itself in its own chapter.
Here’s a bit of further explanation from Chapter A (which is the only one I’ve read so far, more on that in a moment):
Hassan can ask that a barman at a bar tap a cask and draw a man a draft (half a dram, a glass): marc, grappa and armagnac, malt, arrack and schnapps. Gangs that act as crass as Harvard grads at a frat (Gamma Kappa Lambda) clack tankards and gawk at a gal, as a gal dabs at black mascara.
When I was figuring out why I was familiar with Bök’s name, I went back to the site where I downloaded “Ubu Hubbub,” and lo and behold! mp3s of Bök reading Eunoia in its entirety! So now I’m going to read the book by reading a chapter alone and then rereading it to Bök’s accompaniment.
[Chris, if you're reading this: Thank you again, and here's where things come full circle: If you go to Bök's audio page on ubuweb (see above links), you will notice that there is also a recording of him reading "Ursonate" by Kurt Schwitters.]
