Chris Eaton, a Biography

Chris Eaton, a Biography is a novel that arises from the idea that we have all been driven, at some point, to Google ourselves. And if you did, what did you find? That there are people out there who seem to have something in common with you? Dates, places, interests? How coincidental are these connections? And what are the factors that define a human life? We are the sum of our stories: Anecdotal constructs. We remember moments in our pasts the way we remember television episodes. In pieces. And we realize that our own memories are no more valid in the construction of our identities than stories we’ve heard from others. Chris Eaton, a Biography constructs a life by using, as building blocks, the lives of dozens of other people who share nothing more than a name, identities that blur into each other with the idea that, in the end, we all live the same life, deal with the same hopes and fears, experience the same joys and tragedies. Only the specifics are different. From birth to death and everything in between, the narratives we share bring us closer to a truth about what it means to be alive. To be you..

AUTHOR

Chris Eaton

Chris Eaton is a musician and novelist from New Brunswick, currently living in Toronto. He is the author of two novels, The Inactivist (2003) and The Grammar Architect (2005). His most recent album with ensemble Rock Plaza Central was given four stars by Rolling Stone and was selected by Pitchfork, CMJ, and Magnet, as one of the 10 best of 2006.

Reviews

Rich, confusing and beautifully written in every line.- Jonathan Lethem, author of Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn, on The Grammar Architect”Ask ten different people to prepare their own New Canadian Canon and you’ll get ten very different lists. My own list would want to find a place for lively, inventive novels like Chris Eaton’s The Grammar Architect.”- Toronto Star, June 19, 2010″The Grammar Architect is a book you could easily read twenty times and still find new things to love about it. Eaton has written one of the most original, funny, beautifully written, and thoroughly complex novels of our young century.”- Ghettoblaster Magazine, NYC”May well be the best Canadian novel of the year. This is the new.”- Kitchener-Waterloo Record review of The Grammar Architect”An experiment worthy of Donald Barthelme at his most rascally… evidence of Eaton’s status as one of Canada’s most assured new writers.”- Eye Magazine review of The Grammar Architect”…a clever satirical gloss on the sort of grave-robbing and body-stitching at the heart of derivative works such as A Thousand Acres and The Hours.”- The Globe and Mail review of The Grammar Architect”…a burst of intricate, lyrical, well-developed writing, of a quality almost meriting the arrogant back-cover assertion that this novel is ï??like a pop culture Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s work.’ A distinctive literary voice emerges… “- Waterloo Imprint review of The Grammar Architect”…like being deluged by a tidal wave of words… Eaton is a sincere poet and each word is carefully chosen. “- Here Magazine review of The Grammar Architect”An informal, visionary voice we don’t hear enough of in CanLit…”- www.goodreports.net”What any writer is after in some primary, essential way is a texture that is all his/her own. I hear Eaton’s texture in these pages, strident, assertive, commanding the turf, engaging me at once and sustaining the melody all the way. His style is constantly in motion, his characters define themselves by the very style that encloses them, and his larger subversive narrative voice sets them up like a malevolent straight man reversing the equation.”- Lawrence Garber, author of Tales from the Quarter