Escher's Loops | |||||||
Zoran Živković | |||||||
PS Publishing, 330 pages | |||||||
|
A review by Kit O'Connell
Even as I began Escher's Loops I continued to sing its praises. My friend, author Rick Klaw, likes to
talk about his "50 page rule" -- life is too short to read bad books, he believes, and so he quits anything
after 50 pages if he's not enjoying himself. But at 50 pages into the PDF format reviewer's edition I was
reading, which is roughly the end of the first of the book's three sections, I was enthralled.
Escher's Loops is divided into three chapters of increasing size, each labeled a loop. Each loop is a
series of interlocking narratives, in which something bizarre and inexplicable happens to the narrator -- in
the first loop, we follow strange memories held by distracted people, beginning and ending with a surgeon who
halts suddenly on the way into the operating room. In the second section, a series of suicides is interrupted
by a woman dressed in green who prevents the death by telling the intended victim about another attempted
suicide which was in turn interrupted by the same green woman. Many of these stories relate back to the first
loop: for example, in the first loop a man remembers being trapped in a Halloween funhouse ride with another
man for hours; in the second loop, one portion concerns the otherworldly experience of a third man also
trapped on the ride unbeknownst to the first two. Finally, in the third loop we revisit many of the characters
of the first two in a series of dream sequences where they are cast into improbable roles such as flight
attendants or line cooks in a kitchen that serves dishes like roast coral.
This book rather effectively simulates some drug trips I have been on, where sensations, experiences and
thoughts seem to endlessly loop back around again and again. Unfortunately, just like those drug trips, the
experience begins colorfully enough but the experience does not stop when the novelty and entertainment value
wear off. As I continued the book, my progress slowed down and my enjoyment with it. My other reading suffered
as I was determined to finish the book despite my growing lack of pleasure in it. It wasn't until I made it
into the third loop that I realized I just didn't care anymore and that other books looked so much more
enticing. Finding out that a suicidal animal tracker from part two was now part of an airplane crew in part
three was not compelling when weighed against the inherently repetitive nature of the book. Like all of
Živković's work, there are dozens of weird and funny details in each loop, but they just weren't
enough to keep me reading.
This is a hard review to write, both because I respect the author and did not enjoy his book, but also because
I can't help but wonder if my discomfort was the intention of the author and I'm not getting the joke. Many
have said that art is most effective when it invokes feelings other than pleasure; pleasure is easy compared
to horror, or discomfort. If Živković intended to make me dislike Escher's Loops, all the
while having difficulty putting it down, then I'd have to say he succeeded. But it wasn't an enjoyable
experience for me, and I do read for pleasure (even if it's sometimes a masochistic sort of pleasure). Unlike
the endless looping drug trip the book seems to simulate, I can stop any time -- albeit with the application
of some considerable effort -- and I did. In the end, Escher's Loops was too much meta, and not enough
fiction for this meta-fiction reader.
Kit O'Connell is a writer, geek and Voluptuary living in Houston, Texas. Kit's poetry has appeared in Aberrant Dreams and Oysters and Chocolate. He can be found online at approximately 8,000 words, his homepage. |
![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
If you find any errors, typos or other stuff worth mentioning,
please send it to editor@sfsite.com.
Copyright © 1996-2014 SF Site All Rights Reserved Worldwide