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Eunoia

You may not have heard of Eunoia by the Canadian poet Christian Bok. It’s the weirdest literary tour de force you’ve ever seen: In each of five chapters, Bok writes gorgeous, flowing surrealist sentences in which the words use only one of the five vowels. There’s one chapter per vowel. You can’t believe how improbably successful this experiment is until you’ve read it.

So try a taste — by checking out the lovely Flash preview put online by the publisher, Coach House Press. The dots at the bottom of the page represent each page in the chapter for “e”. As you glide your mouse over each, the page appears; click on the dot, and the page zooms in and pans crazily. It’s a nice evocation of the mental state of the book — and, probably, of the reader.

If you want, you can also read the entire book online for free: Coach House has put it up here. But if you do, I’d also suggest sending the author a tip or buying a print copy of the book. Work this devoted deserves to be rewarded.

(Thanks to BookNinja for this one!)


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I'm Clive Thompson, the author of Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better (Penguin Press). You can order the book now at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powells, Indiebound, or through your local bookstore! I'm also a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. Email is here or ping me via the antiquated form of AOL IM (pomeranian99).

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