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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An instant favorite, November 20, 2002
I was prompted to buy a copy of Eunoia after hearing Christian Bok reading excerpts on the radio. I devoured the book in one sitting, turning each page with greater anticipation, relishing each example of verbal ingenuity. To me, that's what Eunoia is essentially about - sheer brilliance. This book is the result of a titanic cerebral initiative and it comes off flawlessly. I've lent this book to dozens of people, and to be honest, not everyone has appreciated it in the same way I have. Some people have read the first page and handed it back saying "I don't get it" or "it makes my head hurt". Clearly, this book is not for everyone. If you have a passion for language you will love this book. If you like word-play, you will love this book. If you appreciate "cleverness" you will love this book. I smiled the whole way through it out of sheer amazement and disbelief. By far the best thing I've read this year, and something that I will continue to revisit over the years to come.
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21 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Eunoia becoming a hit among true synesthetes, December 29, 2001
Christian Bök's Eunoia is becoming a fast hit among those with actual "colored-letter" synesthesia. Christian Bök based part of his ideas for Eunoia off the concept of synesthesia, mainly borrowing from Arthur Rimbaud's poem "Voyelles" (the strangely-colored cover design for the book is also based upon the same). In "Voyelles", Rimbaud creates correspondences between colors and letters of the alphabet (or, more specifically, the written symbols - the graphemes) for vowels. Synesthesia is an actually existing, albeit rare, set of benign neurological conditions. Overwhelmingly, the most common (perhaps as common as existing in 1 out of every 750 people) form of synesthesia involves involuntary, automatic correspondences made between colors and graphemes (letter and number characters). This type of synesthesia is apparently genetically-based (that is, organic, and not psychologically based upon childhood associations), and usually emerges around the age of six or seven years of age. Those with "colored-letter" synesthesia generally maintain it throughout life, with virtually no variations in the color-letter correspondences. They have no choice as to which colors are associated with which letters and are stuck with the links throughout life. Also, each individual synesthete's total set of color-letter correspondences is unique, although there are certain trends to be found world-wide with certain graphemes, such as "A" being red and "O" being white or clear amongst about two-thirds of all such synesthetes. Rimbaud was not a colored-letter synesthete; he admits that he made up the correspondences in his (in-)famous poem. However, now, true colored-letter synesthetes are finding Bök's book either an overwhelming thrill or nightmare. To those without this form of synesthesia, the pages of Bök's book - each page using one and only one vowel for all words - glare with the profusion of the particular vowel. For the actual colored-letter synesthete, each particular page tends to totally overwhelm with a particular color. I have received letters from synesthetes writing in rapturous awe of how a certain chapter of Eunoia sweep them with the "icy whiteness of O", or how it is a nightmare with simply too much red "A" (even though, to Rimbaud, "A" was supposed to be black) distracting from everything else. Sean A. Day, President, American Synesthesia Association
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A+ For Originality & Effort, C For Actual Content, December 2, 2008
As its author weaves his stories out of single vowels, Eunoia is imminently delightful but also rapidly tiring and gimmicky. It is more of a curiosity than a readable work. Its novelty wears thin after a few minutes, and while this oeuvre never strays from being a remarkable undertaking, my practical side also questions whether the effort on its creator's part was worth the finished product. Perhaps the biggest surprise to come from Eunoia was the sheer difficulty in reading through it. I found myself backing up and re-reading sentences for content, something I haven't done as often since elementary school. How nostalgic, huh? Eunoia is a curiosity but little more. I salute Christian Bok for his labor of love (or was it a labor of madness?) but I can't see Eunoia as a work of genius, merely a work composed of....a lot of work.
That said, my five-minute poem of tribute to Bok:
Alas, all day a lad's art lacks a fan's handclap and
Enters the sleep these restless westerners she reveres here need---
I find it icky, writings in
Worn schoolbooks, known to hold good old story of:
Sunup! Such rush! Such hum! Tumult! Thus lush church kudzu unfurls, gulls hunt, pluck bug-guts. Bugs burst, succumb!
Now imagine page after page of this, only better-written, and you got Eunoia.
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