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Ben Marcus
does not publish enough books. He seems to be on a six-year
schedule, which is probably why I've been thinking about him
so much lately. His first book, The Age of Wire and String,
came out in 1996, and Notable American Women in 2002.
So if the pattern is correct, there will be another Marcus
book this year. But can two books constitute a pattern?
Marcus
straddles a fence between the old meta-fiction, and the new
sincerity. Language games and emotions stand side by side,
engaged in an eternal thumb-wrestle for dominance. The result
is jarring. He's similar to David Foster Wallace and George
Saunders. And like them, his books are smart and dystopian,
but they are infinitely stranger than anything Saunders or
Wallace have published.
In the
dream-like Marcus world, electricity stalls without the energy
produced from having sex with a zombie-wife, dogs have additional
lungs, and chemicals have names like Samantha 7 and Louise.
The insignificant is fraught with meaning. Marcus is a surrealist
but is slightly more plot-driven than the early surrealist
writers like Paul Eluard and Andre Breton.
 Maybe
in a Marcus world, I would have some sort of innate knowledge
of the six-year pattern. In the Marcus world, all the previous
men named Ben Marcus would have published every six years,
allowing a reasonable degree of predictability. There would
be an entry about it that would read something like "Marcus,
Ben: The name given to all language disturbers for the sharp,
harsh sound it creates. Ben Marcus syndrome may be resolved
by cold mud packs and muted language clothing. Uncured Ben
Marcuses publish disturbing books every six years." (There
was an illustrated novella published in 2002, The Father
Costume, but I consider that an anomalous event and will
not be discussed regarding any publishing pattern.)
I have
no memory of when or how I found Ben Marcus, but what I do
remember is that when I was reading his books, I ran into
someone I knew on the subway whose name was Jeremy Marcus.
I also remember I wanted my friend Peter to read this book,
but Peter hates to read books like this. I think he may have
yelled at me when I suggested it. Later that day, a bat flew
into my apartment, attracted by the sound of a man yelling
about experimental fiction. The best review on Amazon for
The Age of Wire and String is from all the way back
in December 1997 and reads, "This book is a load of creepy,
spooky gibberish—the product of a deranged imagination."
Sometimes I wonder if Marcus wrote it himself.
The
Age of Wire and String is called "stories" right on the
cover, but that's a lie. It's a novel written in disjointed
chapters. The book is 160 pages, but that doesn't describe
its density. It reads like a technical guide to another universe
with entries that explain the semiology of various events
like this one:
Snoring,
Accidental Speech: Snoring, language disturbance caused
by accidental sleeping, in which a person speaks in compressed
syllables and bulleted syntax, often stacking several
words over one another in a distemporal deliverance of
a sentence. The snoring person can be stuffed with cool
air to slow the delivery of its language, but perspiration
froths at key points on the hips and back when artificial
air is introduced, and thus the sleep becomes sketchy
and riddled with noise. It is often best to cull the sleeper
forth with apneic barks--sounds produced without air.
The effect of the barks is to isolate each aspect of the
snore sound by slowing down the delivery--riding the sleeper
until the snore breaks into separate words. Decoders should
sit on the bed and jostle the sleeper's stomach. This
further dispatches the clusters that often form when the
sleeper speaks all at once (snores). The decoder is then
better able to decipher the word blocks. When analyzed,
the messages are often simple. Pull me out, they say,
the water has risen to the base of my neck.
 Marcus's
second book, Notable American Women, is slightly more
narrative than AoWaS but no less occluded, and I mean that
in the nicest way. In AoWaS, Marcus describes how his
world works, but in Notable American Women, he allows the
characters to describe it. Notable American Women takes
place in a paradise or a dystopia, depending on the reader's
world view. A young man named Ben Marcus is being raised in
Ohio, where his mother Jane belongs to a cult called The Silentists.
The Silentists follow the teachings of Jane Dark, whose goal
is to create complete silence, and eventually complete stillness.
Ben is being raised to have no emotions, and to be a breeder
for the cult. Ben's father, Michael, is living in a hole in
the backyard. Ben Marcus the writer is not the Ben Marcus
in Notable American Women. They bear no similarities.
Book Ben is considered untrustworthy by his father Michael,
and may be mentally handicapped. Book Ben's father says, "How
can one word from Ben Marcus's rotten, filthy heart be trusted?"
This is problematic because Ben Marcus narrates large sections
of NAW. One Amazon review says, "Marcus is one of those
contemporary writers who thinks that "challenging" prose is
somehow a substitute for a good story." I'm guessing that
the reviewer has a problem with that, since he gave the book
one star.
What
connects both books is the deconstruction of language, but
to go further into the hermeneutics of Marcus's books would
require another book. Marcus is writing a philosophy of language
as fiction. Reading Marcus is like training for a marathon.
First, you should start off slowly, reading The Age of
Wire and String one short chapter at a time, and eventually
your brain will be ready for Notable American Women.
After that, who knows? You may write that hermeneutic of Marcus
yourself.
A friend
of mine saw Ben Marcus walking up Broadway one day, up near
Columbia University, where he heads the Creative Writing MFA
program. Because she was also walking up Broadway, she followed
him for a few blocks, accidentally. She may have described
his walk as "long loping strides," or I may have imagined
that. When I picture it, this is what I see: it's a grey chilly
day in late winter and Marcus is in some sort of gas-station
attendant-like costume. Sometimes I wonder if I had seen Marcus
if I would have spoken to him, ran up to him and said, "I
love your books!" It sounds so mundane that when I think about
this, I see myself running up to him like a little girl running
after her father, and he turns around and I open my mouth
and no sound comes out at all.
(June,
2008)
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