Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The process behind the products, June 10, 2005
Jeff Noon is a wonderful writer. Shades of Haruki Murakami by way of early Jonathan Lethem (and others), his sharply pointed science fiction-like stories and novels are deliciously active idea demons and concept farmers. In Cobralingus, Noon introduces those familiar with his work -- it is not the best introduction to Noon by any means -- to a game that writers can use to recombine disparate texts, apply a set of rules, and develop outlet texts that read like some of the most imaginative skiffy out there -- even if they're mutations of pre-existing texts.
After explaining the game's process and offering a key to the rules, what Noon terms "filter gates," the writer serves up 10 example stories, starting with the original, or inlet, text -- and stepping through the process until the resulting outlet text arrives. It's a fascinating, albeit occasionally confusing and mind-bending process, but the end results are wonderful. At the end, Noon divulges his source texts, which range from a 1591 madrigal to a BBC shipping forecast transmitted in 1999.
This is a book for readers, but it is also a book for writers. The text -- and the game -- made me want to write. And should I develop writers block, I now have a new game-like process I can use to get back on the horse and ride.
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10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Brilliant Side Step, January 18, 2001
I belive that the above review misses the point that Mr Noon was making in publishing this piece. There is no such actual thing as the "Cobralingus Engine", it is a device dreamed up in the head of the author Jeff Noon as an experimental way of working out new ways of writing. Being a person greatly interested in DJing and the forms of Audio mixing, it was so refreshing and interesting to see these concepts applied to the humble word.His last book, Needle in the Groove, was his first experiment with this stylistic approach, and I believe that this book is unto itself a marvellous side-step from his normal works. I have no doubt that he will have a new "Story" book out very soon, but I believe his point with this offering was to show us readers the style behind his extremely picturesque word usage, that has developed throughout his career. It is clever, witty, and an extremely interesting peice of literature - and in using the word literature, I mean exactly that - this is no pulp sci-fi, this is a work of pure art, and should be viewed as such with open eyes - do so, and you will be amazed. Well done Mr Noon, very well done.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Food for the brain: Creative systems poetry, October 30, 2006
First of all, I hope this gets back into print soon. Also, there are at least two different covers, the one not shown above being a nice illustration.
This is a book that has grown on me over time, and today I'm very glad I kept it around. It's the kind I often return to to read a short section, a single "poem", which leaves me sitting lost in thought for a while.
These are unusual poems that can be seen in their various stages of life, each equally presented as a final piece. Like a computer program or a DJ processing a sample of sound, a text snippet is passed through various filters and processes that re-arrange, sometimes wildly, the content to create various stages of the poems evolution. These are not just the output of some computer randomizer however, the processes are to my mind much more creative and human than could be achieved by software. Some do things like mix up all the words which is fairly easy, but others do things like "Find A Story" from a jumble of words, which obviously involves a lot more decision making and creativity from the author.
Just as in modern music samples, the source material covers a huge range, from serious literature such as Shakespeare, to pedestrain things like "things that happened to Jeff Noon today". The results are always amazing and inspiring, both for the actual content, creativity and beauty in the text, as well as the concepts used for types of manipulation.
This is one of the most creatively inspiring books i own, from someone very interested in poetry, systems processing, modern art, modern music, deconstruction, etc.
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