Thursday, February 02, 2006

You must listen to this!

I got this from my friend Kathleen Flenniken. It's a recording of Christian Bok reading, from his book Eunoia, a long poem that contains not a single vowel except U. It is sonically amazing. Plus there is a very hot sex scene described with all U words (imagine how many you can think of).


http://mediamogul.seas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Bok/Eunoia/Bok-Christian_Eunoia_06-Chapter-U.mp3



Addendum: Let the record show the inimitable Ron Starr has indeed been singing the praises of Bok for several years now. Unfortunately, it has fallen on my and others' tin ears. Next time Bok reads in Seattle I hereby request that Ron forcibly grab me by said ear and bring me along! ~grin~

3 comments:

Justin Evans said...

I can never remember the names of books, but there is one book written without the letter "e." Later, the same guy wrote a book using "e" as the only vowel. They were both in prose, I believe.


p.s. my verification was

wuhhql

just the "u."

The Sublibrarian said...

Justin,

You're thinking of George Perec. The novel without the "e" is La Disparition (The Disappearance) translated into English as A Void. The novel into which Perec said that he put all of the leftover "e"s is Les Revenents, translated by Ian Monk as The Exeter Text.

A Seattle writer who carries on in this vein is Doug Nufer. His novel Negativeland uses only negative sentences, while his novel Never Again never repeats a word.

Weird—I have hfuykrwm.

Ivy said...

Rum fun.