128 pages, Lulu
Review by Marc Nash
What a fantastic concept for a book!
George Perec may have written a whole novel without a single letter 'E' (ironic
seeing as there are four in his name on the spine, bet he still got paid royalties
though), but Dan Holloway has created a work of literature constructed almost
entirely from numbers.
Each chapter represents a year in the
lives of the eponymous Evie and Guy. The text is constructed of dates, times,
duration and the parentheses reporting interruptions or other impediments to
finishing, the act of masturbation. And that's it. A matrix of numbers that
look random and yet means so much. For this is a book about relationship as
measured by time. A clusterf*ck of a read, both literally and metaphorically.
Relationship, not in that wooly sense of
you and your partner, but an actual physical relationship of two bodies
(objects) in proximate space. Though the two narrative timetables are separated
in the text, Evie’s following on only after the entirety of Guy’s, the reader
is silently entreated to superimpose them to try and render meaning. To see
where their onanistic acts might coincide (the only way perhaps for them to
mutually consummate their love?) or perhaps where they are cast down in their
own solitude and simultaneously scratch their own sexual itches. The beauty and
simplicity of the 10 digits of the numerical palette are arranged and
rearranged with subtle differences so as to offer different emotional tenors
and different physical alignments.
I’m reminded of the fathers of forensics
such as fingerprinting, who patiently built up a database until the sample was
large enough to be able to pronounce it a science that followed rules and
predictable observations. Here the reader, if they are so minded, can plot the
blow by blow comparison of Evie’s times and dates with that of Guy’s to glean
the emotional state of their relationship at any one moment. Was Guy frotting
himself to death in a particular year because he was unfulfilled by Evie, or
separated from her? Did the Fall of the Berlin Wall give him a hard on in front
of the TV that he just had to relive himself? For her part, Evie’s
self-pleasuring never falters while with Guy and it is only when he is dying
that she becomes less surefooted (handed?). Once she has honoured his passing,
she reasserts her sexuality and is able to fulfill her pleasures as before.
Guy’s dishonour roll of interrupted or failed tommy tank manoeuvres attests
maybe to the more mechanical torquing of the male member, that there is a
climactic destination that has to be attained, else it is a failure. A dud. A
blank. Even the name 'Guy' perhaps stands for every (male) man perhaps? This is
a book about both relationship and gender, employing numbers but not by the
numbers.
I don’t think its canvas is quite as
large as the author perhaps imagines, citing the artistic language of Rothko
and Emin in his preface. It’s actually way more intimate and I believe all the
better for that, so that it is not weighed down by notions of grand art and
experimentalism. But it is interesting, that just like an opaque piece of
contemporary conceptual art may rely on its title and or an explanatory text,
“Evie and Guy” hinges on that one page explanatory preface and the sole
appearance of words in the numerical narrative at the year 1995 to draw the
novel to its conclusion. I read the book first without the preface and
couldn’t for the life of me figure out what the set of figures in the brackets
represented. It was only by reading the explanatory words of the preface that
those important contextualising devices were set in place.
A brave work, but in form and content.
And one that could reward endless revisiting with full attention to detail.
Plot your own matrices and enjoy!
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