The Easy Chain

by Evan Dara

book data

10 ratings, 4.20 average rating, 5 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		40%
4		40%
3		20%
2		0%
1		0%

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published

August 8th 2008 by Aurora

binding

Paperback, 502 pages

isbn

0980226600 (isbn13: 9780980226607)

description

The second novel by Evan Dara, author of The Lost Scrapbook

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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 25)

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08/28/08

karen rated it:

bookshelves: great-authors-no-one-reads, littry-fiction

Read in September, 2008

recommends it for: others

evan dara is not for everyone. he writes huge muddled messy nonlinear whooshes of books that just are like a duststorm that consumes the reader and leaves us breathless and dizzy but crying "when will you write again??"

it is untidy, in a really compelling way, and is perfect for people who hate a predictable book.

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4 comments

11/05/08

Jeff rated it:

Read in October, 2008

recommended to Jeff by: Karen
recommends it for: Karen

- well it's really something way beyond what anybody expe-

-it was and, yes, it did but don't let anybody tell you that this one has the glare suggested by...what? by last chances, or, no. It's the pages that are blank I'm talking about.

-But the book is more than that. This one somehow manages to glow from within, whereas the last scrapbook he wrote don't touch it at all like that. No, no. I'm only comparing to suggest what should be obvious. Dara

-Dara pops, ...more

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14 comments

11/03/08

Eugene rated it:

Read in November, 2008

THE LOST SCRAPBOOK debuted dara's original technique of narrative splicing–a kind of collage work done in series, rather than in space. THE EASY CHAIN operates in similar fashion and, like THE LOST SCRAPBOOK, is a political novel, one made of principally two things: ideas–witty analysis of our inept and corrupt culture–and yarns. dara’s specialty is in fact the yarn, the almost wholesome tale, ending with a zinger or even a moral. on their own they would be nice bits of entertainment, st...more THE LOST SCRAPBOOK debuted dara's original technique of narrative splicing–a kind of collage work done in series, rather than in space. THE EASY CHAIN operates in similar fashion and, like THE LOST SCRAPBOOK, is a political novel, one made of principally two things: ideas–witty analysis of our inept and corrupt culture–and yarns. dara’s specialty is in fact the yarn, the almost wholesome tale, ending with a zinger or even a moral. on their own they would be nice bits of entertainment, strung together in series they make something else, at best it makes a convincing group portraiture of our rattled time… it’s a strange accomplishment, and the only one i could think to relate it to was the reaction had after watching linklater’s WAKING LIFE, where a series of undergraduate-y philosophical discussions, in aggregate, has the larger wallop of showing that we are a species of similar concerns, with similar self-designed thought experiments, and indeed similar fantasies.

it is a slightly lopsided novel–though i don’t think it’s at all the half loaf that one review had it. the first half has a better-defined gambit, which then disintegrates it’s not quite clear how effectively… its lead is a character who happens to be extremely charismatic. that’s his super-power–given without much of an origin story. and in the first half of the book we get to watch him wield this power against wealthier chicago. Lincoln “vaulted to the top of the city’s social hierarchy, slept with the majority of its first daughters and racked up an unimaginable fortune.” the second half of the novel then significantly drops the story of Lincoln, concerning itself only obliquely with him and his unexplained reversal. this half has some admittedly outrageous and not-always-successful gambits, including odd punctuation to denote voice stresses, a poor attempt at some kind of echo-affected poetry, and what i think was a long narrative from the POV of a piece of dust. i’m not sure. it gets a little wacky.

but there are really fantastic parts throughout, setpieces, yarns mostly, unsmug moral tales that show us both the hypocrisies and possibilities for hope in our consumerist endtimes. a fantastic one near the end about how a hippie food joint gets taken over and saved by a “one man Information Counterrevolution,” that is: a man of silence (324). another hilarious story concerns a pair of unsavvy buddhists trying to go into business (to practice right livelihood) and getting all kinds of screwed.

other idea riffs are almost equally engaging as his stories. a few eloquent rants about our advertising-based culture where dara defines terms–the “skonk” and “conicons”–needed to make it run; one extremely prescient bit about how markets reward response, not value (187); and here is dara on how progress has us lose sight of fundamental values, the big picture, in our driven chase to get granular:

“In the libraries, he had also seen the affinity between progress and reduction. Day after day, in one library after another, he had noticed the cadenzas of rapt attention played to minutiae, as larger concerns grew foggy with neglect. Increasing acuity of perception driving wider blindness, evident & necessary visions falling on eyes without feeling. It was evolutionary: to continue, to flourish & prosper, whittle yourself to the barest functional minimum, then pass this on. Again, reason has produced its flipside, history has worked its dull revenge” (429). (less)

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10/25/08

Jeff rated it:

A friend from the Bay Area told me he saw this at a Berkeley bookstore, and I was insanely excited to read it because The Lost Scrapbook is a favorite of mine. However, I couldn't find the book anywhere, and for months the only reference I saw to it online was a cover-imageless listing on Amazon.com. I was disappointed that I did not live in the same dimension in which this book existed. Eventually, I found it on the publisher's web site, so I ordered it.

The style in which it is wri...more A friend from the Bay Area told me he saw this at a Berkeley bookstore, and I was insanely excited to read it because The Lost Scrapbook is a favorite of mine. However, I couldn't find the book anywhere, and for months the only reference I saw to it online was a cover-imageless listing on Amazon.com. I was disappointed that I did not live in the same dimension in which this book existed. Eventually, I found it on the publisher's web site, so I ordered it.

The style in which it is written is striking. Much of it is written in free dialogue--no quotes, no removed narrative voice or exposition. Faceless, nameless people talk about the protagonist, Lincoln Selwyn; that's the bulk of the novel. As it progresses, we follow Lincoln around as he meets with various entrepreneurs, con men, investors, and straight-up nutbags. Those are my favorite scenes, because they give Dara a chance to do what he does best--float oddball theories and mess around with the worlds he creates.

Dara also breaks into repetitive, not-so-hot verse and incoherent ramblings and stuffs a bunch of blank pages in there. The novel seems to explode a few times. The good parts are so good that I'll follow him just about anywhere, but Dara definitely tried my patience in this book.

But: skronk!

No one seems to know who Evan Dara is, by the way. I've been speculating about it with a friend since we read The Lost Scrapbook together, and this novel didn't do much to dissuade me from our theory: that Evan Dara is a pen name for David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, Richard Powers, William T Vollmann, or all of them--a collaborative project. If I had to pick one of these writers to be the man behind the Evan Dara mask, it would be DFW. I like to imagine Wallace writing under a pen name to escape the pressure of following Infinite Jest. Of course, the big problem with that theory is that The Lost Scrapbook came out in 95 and Infinite Jest came out in 96. Still, there are plenty of stylistic similarities and shared preoccupations between the two writers. In the final pages of Easy Chain, Dara even uses a pet phrase of DFW's ("and but so") and makes a Wittgenstein reference (DFW's Broom of the System is full of them). Also, the end of Easy Chain makes for a pretty moving Goodbye Cruel World. Now I'm just bumming myself out.(less)

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08/18/08

Steve rated it:

Read in June, 2008

The publisher of The Easy Chain--which publisher I'm starting to think is author Evan Dara himself--shot me an email for a pre-release offer for a copy (officially released Aug 8, 2008; I got mine June 16 and read it in 10 days) I guess because I have a personal page for Dara's first novel The Lost Scrapbook. [I've since created a page for The Easy Chain as well.]

I enjoyed it a LOT and am already trying to figure out when I can get a re-read in.

The novel is the story of ...more The publisher of The Easy Chain--which publisher I'm starting to think is author Evan Dara himself--shot me an email for a pre-release offer for a copy (officially released Aug 8, 2008; I got mine June 16 and read it in 10 days) I guess because I have a personal page for Dara's first novel The Lost Scrapbook. [I've since created a page for The Easy Chain as well.]

I enjoyed it a LOT and am already trying to figure out when I can get a re-read in.

The novel is the story of Lincoln Selwyn, a Briton who came to Chicago by way of The Netherlands, and who in a short time becomes the toast of the town's business and social scenes. Then something happens that blows the narrative to smithereens...

Now, I dig Harry Potter as much as the next guy :-) but my tastes can also run to the unconventional. (Not Age Of Wire & String unconventional, mind you, but House Of Leaves, Infinite Jest, Gold Bug Variations are all lifetime favorites.) Unresolved plotlines do not bother me too much, so long as I feel the writing is worth reading. The Easy Chain is not especially easy at all, and it might not satisfy readers who liked The Lost Scrapbook's satisfying resolution. (Although honestly, if a reader stuck with The Lost Scrapbook long enough to actually experience that resolution, he/she just might have the patience for The Easy Chain after all.) In this, his second novel, Dara goes nuts in eight different directions, and if you're up for it, I say DIVE IN. There's all sorts of cool fun to be had here. Stream of consciousness, whack-a-mole POV (Lost Scrapbook style), verse! (VERSE I SAY!)...heck, one section is written from the POV of friggin' dirt.

BUT...I've only read it once: there could be--I'm sure there is--much underlying structure that I missed (that big section at the end with the autistic girl??) as I did my first trip through each of the aforementioned lifetime favorites. Still a fascinating read for me. Like I said, it's already on my reread list.
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*MILD SPOILER ALERT: In one memorable scene, a guy just sitting in a restaurant triggers a chain of events that culminates with a large US town being erased from the earth's surface, person by person, building by building, brick by brick, molecule by molecule! (Even weirder for me, I happened to be visiting this very town while I was reading the book, and in fact was sitting on a bench in the very plaza I was reading about! One of the most bizarre experiences I've ever had! I mean, I'm sure that happens to New Yorkers all the time since so many stories are set there. But for a North Carolinian visiting Colorado?? What are the odds?)(less)

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