Slouka, Mark

PERSONAL:

Education: Columbia University, B.A. (cum laude), M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of English, University of Chicago, 1115 E. 58th St., Chicago, IL 60637. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Columbia University, New York, NY, associate professor; University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, professor of English and chair of the Committee on Creative Writing. Has also lectured at University of California, San Diego, CA; Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA; and Harvard University, Cambridge, MA.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Teacher of the Year, University of California, San Diego, 1993-94; National Magazine Award in Fiction, 1995, for "The Woodcarver's Tale"; California Book Award, 1999, for Lost Lake; San Francisco Chronicle Book of the Year and Washington Post Book of the Year, both 2002, for God's Fool.

WRITINGS:

War of the Worlds: Cyberspace and the Hi-Tech Assault on Reality, Basic Books (New York, NY), 1995.

Lost Lake (short stories), Knopf (New York, NY), 1998.

God's Fool (novel), Knopf (New York, NY), 2002.

The Visible World, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2007.

Contributor to periodicals, including Harper's, Esquire, San Francisco Chronicle, and Georgia Review. Work featured in Best American Essays, 1999, 2000, and 2004.

SIDELIGHTS:

Mark Slouka, who more recently has pursued fiction writing, had his publishing debut in a book that analyzes the negative influence of the Internet on society, culture, and human values. Many reviewers considered War of the Worlds: Cyberspace and the Hi-Tech Assault on Reality to be a corrective to the enthusiastically positive light cast on technological developments of the late twentieth century. Examples of promoters of the Internet and the information superhighway included Republican Newt Gingrich and Democrat Al Gore, both of whom publicly proclaimed the economic and social advantages of the new technology during the 1990s. Slouka was widely criticized, however, for overstating his case, particularly in comparing users of the Internet to followers of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.

While Slouka was given credit for providing a timely warning about what he perceives to be a naively open attitude toward the endless reproduction of alternative realities via high technology, his failure to find any redeeming characteristics in the Internet or its users left him open to the label "extremist." Lee Dembart, a critic for the Los Angeles Times, summarized the best and worst of Slouka's effort: "On the one hand, we should thank him for challenging the conventional wisdom" about the advantages that accrue to those conversant with the Internet. "On the other hand," Dembart continued, "War of the Worlds is … so extreme in its condemnation that it seriously weakens the good points the author makes."

At the heart of Slouka's critique of cyberspace and cyberists—cyber theorists—is an analysis of how real life—known as R.L. on the Internet—becomes devalued. Even those who are not yet online are to be found in front of another kind of screen, the television, rather than out in the world participating in real life, interacting in meaningful ways with real people. Slouka "writes about these matters with enormous energy and ardor," according to New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani. Indeed, other reviewers have commented on the moving portrait Slouka paints of victims of cyberspace, young people who spend their days in front of computer screens and then attend a music concert where the performance is presented on a large overhead screen; others tuned into cyberspace after school or work are drawn into illicit relationships that implicitly call their very identities into question. "War of the Worlds is an appeal, in effect, to the spirit of our age, warning it not to go too far in the creation of an alternative electronic ‘reality,’" wrote Stephen Joel Trachtenberg in the Washington Post Book World.

Even those critics who were sympathetic with Slouka's dire warnings about the ill effects of the Internet found his arguments to be marred by hyperbole. More than one critic singled out the extremism of the author's comparison between the cyberists' enthusiasm for a worldwide community of the mind with the roar of the crowds at Nuremberg cheering on Chancellor Hitler. Such brash overstatement "distracts the reader from Mr. Slouka's many more convincing ideas," remarked Kakutani, "and undermines the authority of what is otherwise a timely and provocative book." Other reviewers, however, emphasized the fundamental accuracy of the portrait Slouka paints. "His thoughtful, provocative critique deflates the giddy, messianic claims of digital-revolution proponents," cheered a reviewer for Publishers Weekly.

Slouka's other works include a collection of short fiction titled Lost Lake. The volume's interrelated tales, mostly told by the same narrator, all concern fishing in waters located near a community of Czech immigrants in New York state. Lost Lake earned the praise of many reviewers. For instance, New York Times Book Review critic Gary Amdahl called the volume "beautiful and mysterious fiction," and added that "what distinguishes Slouka is his insistent message that life and death cannot be separated, even for a moment." Similarly, Library Journal contributor Patrick Sullivan wrote that the stories in Lost Lake are "lyrical and beautifully written."

God's Fool, Slouka's first novel, was published in 2002. Like Darin Strauss's Chang and Eng, it is a fictionalized version of the life stories of the famous Siamese (conjoined) twins Chang and Eng Bunker. Again, Slouka's writing met with positive remarks from many critics. John Green praised the book in Booklist as a "sprawling, beautiful novel that touches on everything from slavery to the shadows of unremembered memory." Emily Hall, while less enthusiastic in her piece for the New York Times Book Review, concluded that Slouka "is at his best when describing the splendors and degradations of Paris and London in the mid-19th century."

Slouka's next book, The Visible World, utilizes a unique structure to tell the stories of Slouka's parents, relying on both fictional and nonfictional perspectives. The book's first section is a memoir of Slouka's childhood as the son of two Czech immigrants, both of whom survived the World War II era. His mother was devastated after the death of her lover during the war, and even after a subsequent marriage and the birth of her children, she continued to hold a torch for him. Her suicide at the age of sixty-four prompted Slouka to travel to Czechoslovakia to uncover the secrets of his parents' pasts. At this point in the book, Slouka begins a fictional account of what he believes transpired between his parents back in the 1940s, and what led his mother to a life full of sadness and regret. In a review for the New York Times Book Review, Eva Hoffman wrote that Slouka has "a knack for conveying errant details and impressions, the sense of promise and of sheer haphazardness that constitutes a traveler's reality. Hoffman ultimately described the book as "a delicately imagined and beautifully rendered novel. The descriptions of nature are precise and sensuous; the vignettes of minor characters vivid and razor sharp." O, the Oprah Magazine reviewer Pam Houston remarked that the "real genius of The Visible World is the way it challenges the division between fiction and nonfiction." A critic for Publishers Weekly found the suspense "well paced, and the action scenes are vividly recounted. Slouka's novel has a poignant verve."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 1, 2002, John Green, review of God's Fool, p. 1511.

Library Journal, June 1, 1998, Patrick Sullivan, review of Lost Lake, p. 165.

Los Angeles Times, September 12, 1995, Lee Dembart, review of War of the Worlds: Cyberspace and the Hi-Tech Assault on Reality, p. 5.

New York Times, August 8, 1995, Michiko Kakutani, review of War of the Worlds, p. C16.

New York Times Book Review, June 21, 1998, Gary Amdahl, "Still Waters," review of Lost Lake, p. 16; May 26, 2002, Emily Hall, review of God's Fool, p. 17; April 19, 2007, Eva Hoffman, review of The Visible World.

O, the Oprah Magazine, April, 2007, Pam Houston review of The Visible World, p. 190.

Publishers Weekly, July 10, 1995, review of War of the Worlds, p. 50; December 4, 2006, review of The Visible World, p. 31.

Washington Post Book World, November 5, 1995, Stephen Joel Trachtenberg, review of War of the Worlds, p. 8.