
Evan Dara: Reader Response
Reactions to the Works of Evan Dara
“Clear your to-read list and put [The Lost Scrapbook] at the top. An amazing mindblowing torrent, a Joycean Gaddisian Rushian Steinian Wallacian but ultimately only Daranian splendor. The book is a vortex of voices leading to the roaring silence of the burst eardrum of your mental ear.”
Yonina Hoffman (@yonina)
“To have authority and gain respect, future novels may need to simulate those books we have to heft and weigh, texts such as anthologies, manuals and encyclopedias. Or maybe not books at all but other performances such as magic acts and circuses, or even repositories of medieval manuscripts and oral histories, archives and museums. At the end of The Recognitions a composer finally plays his own music in a cathedral, hits a very difficult note, and brings the cathedral down on his head. Dara has taken a similar risk with his Beethoven-influenced novel of variations. Readers who wish to see books preserved will want to have this one…”
Tom LeClair, on The Lost Scrapbook

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- Guiding Mose Eakins, Part 2I needed a framework, an organised structure for breaking down Evan Dara’s play Provisional Biography of Mose Eakins into its fixed and variable components. The solution was a large table, a gridded spreadsheet with time on the vertical axis.
- Guiding Mose Eakins, Part 1 by Ned Devere (@edevere17) 1. Pseudonymous I came late to Evan Dara. You see, to entertain myself and a few like-minded others I blog pseudonymously as the pseudonymous author of certain plays and poems written in the 16th century. This requires a lot of homework, a perpetual pile of nonfiction meant to keep me fromContinue reading “Guiding Mose Eakins, Part 1 “
- Steven Moore’s List of the Most Impressive Books of 2021It’s been heartening to see the reaction to Permanent Earthquake, which was released this summer. But it’s especially cockle-warming to see a note of recognition from one of our best contemporary literary critics, Steven Moore. Moore is probably best known for his trailblazing work on William Gaddis, including his Reader’s Guide to William Gaddis’ TheContinue reading “Steven Moore’s List of the Most Impressive Books of 2021”