“Across Eugene Lim’s body of work—the four novels Fog and Car, The Strangers, Dear Cyborgs, and Search History; chapbooks, short stories, and other published prose—runs ‘a series of monologues,’ a ruthless and economical parataxis of figures and forms. The sections and subsections appear random, but they’re also dense, abstract, figurative, reiterating…”
“No one is writing like Lim. If anything, Lim forces us to articulate how we ask questions of the world—inside and outside literature. How does anyone act in retaliation or defense? How does anyone appraise and evaluate anything at all? How does one live inside this impasse?”
Many thanks to Shinjini Dey. Read their essay, “The Haunting Presence of a Network: On Eugene Lim,” at the Cleveland Review of Books.