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The Age of Wire and String Ben Marcus 9781564781963 Books

Download As PDF : The Age of Wire and String Ben Marcus 9781564781963 Books

The Age of Wire and String Ben Marcus 9781564781963 Books

I like wordplay. Playful words play me. Same
for a number of fine, brave writers I follow.

Heading the pack, my subjective favorite, is Gary Lutz. Stories in the Worst WayOthers you'll find at Amazon are Robert Coover, Gertrude Stein, David Foster Wallace, George Saunders, Donald Barthelme and Richard Brautigan - among who knows how many other not-ready-for-literal-ity experimental word players. Maybe what Hemingway was once thought to be. Oh, there's the daring Italian writer, Italo Calvino, too, maybe one of the first into the deep end of this particular pool.

I gave Marcus only four stars because his word plays were solely, it often seemed, for their own sake and not to make a point or tell a story or convey information. Sometimes some kind of story emerges; but not often. He sort of tucks his work into jabberwocky, I think maybe a Lewis Carroll term, from that Wonderland Alice, which verged on this genre.

The other writers on my above list make points, tell stories; for Marcus here, it seems word gymnastics are generally enough. They are entertaining, though. Momentarily.
Interesting because they're odd, strange looking for substance. For you, which is more important, what's said or how it's said?

FYI, Marcus also edited this: The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories His writer/story choices lean into this style for style's sake sack. (Like that) Many strange for strange sake, which obviously appealed to their editor. Me, I still look forward to post-postmodern stuff.


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The Age of Wire and String Ben Marcus 9781564781963 Books Reviews

The Age of Wire and String by Ben Marcus is a contained work of ramblings for someone who is clearly trying to be smarter then the room by listlessly spouting out page after page of nonsensical nothingness. Before purchasing this book I read reviews praising Marcus' style and non-linear story telling but I fail to see any story being told at any point in this book. I'm sure Marcus has a solid grasp of the English language as his constant use of interlocking wordplay indicates, but he could use it to such greater degrees and actually accomplish some form of a goal with his work.
This work has served me one purpose which is why I did not rate it one star. It has put me to sleep a number of times after a long day of work, and for that I am appreciative.
Not only is the Emperor (of creative writing genious) devoid of clothes, he's a little girl.
Does Ben Marcus actually have aspbergers or is he merely affecting it as a literary style?
Just wondering.
It was a good one.
On the face of it I am sympathetic to a book that is fresh and inventive and that challenges the conventional limits of written prose, and I knew Ben Marcus from an article he wrote on Jonathan Franzen (and literary art) that he had his values in the right place. But this stringing together of a series of arbitrary nouns and adjectives completing arbitrary acts with other nonsequiturs simply doesn't provide enough stimulus to the imagination or enough consistency to work toward any greater meaning. If there was a code I couldn't break it. So this deliberate nonsense quickly became tedious.

A few years ago a variety of email spam was sent with advertisers' slogans as the subject heading, and so that the spam would look to the sensors like a legitimate message there was computer-generated nonsense masquerading as text. I collected some because it seemed mentally stimulating. A sample

legalize to architectural at predetermined hallucinate the crazily, smog team adult. the heartbeat ground floor ribbon dangerously striptease the that opera house turntable of intervention in an collarbone annoyance of and reputation are simplify governorship a postmortem a? deplorably first lady polygon bay hammering both creature as flabby that dicey, the moderator provost, at desktop computer, a? faggot photo, in on orbital km, to scrawny, aphrodisiac to necessity flounce envision, tassel, of was human filling redemption half sister rehearsal dart Fourth of July at impair celery thigh distillation. morbid payee, biography confine, a and mother or illustrate boar, to spooky of closely a incomprehensible microfilm as Mother's Day ratio second nature and minnow, cinnamon COLA risque a firsthand! captivity accredited with northwest flipper and as diseased was literate microfiche or westerly nice objection falsify a liable as?! failing sleeplessness or canal. cactus that sagebrush rabid deduct. love affair sensationalism? jackhammer as irreconcilable eligible an abdomen life expectancy in and emir, lurid

True, this block of random words doesn't hold to conventional grammar as does Marcus' prose, but on the other hand it was free. "The Age of Wire and String," needless to say, cost money but held no greater stimulus value. Innovation often involves risk, and risk implies occasional failure. Blessings on those who deem this work a success, but for me, "Notable American Women" might have been the wiser choice.
I don't know any of any other work from Marcus but this book seems to me to be a novelist who has been reading a lot of Artaud.

Lots of great short pieces that you can just flip through whenever you need something to keep your attention.
This is Ben Marcus' first book. Most of the pieces consist of underlying simple expository prose, subject-verb-object, as one might find in a college textbook. But then oddly unsuitable terms are overlaid, producing a surreal effect, viz., of water. "It oxidizes slowly in ALBERT and rapidly in LOUISE. It is attacked by solutions of RICHARD 3 and by concentrated or dilute SAMANTHA 7G." This is something of a one-trick pony, and the author has gone on to more conventional styles. But The Age of Wire and String is a brilliant work, disorienting and satisfying, and very often quite clever.
I like wordplay. Playful words play me. Same
for a number of fine, brave writers I follow.

Heading the pack, my subjective favorite, is Gary Lutz. Stories in the Worst WayOthers you'll find at are Robert Coover, Gertrude Stein, David Foster Wallace, George Saunders, Donald Barthelme and Richard Brautigan - among who knows how many other not-ready-for-literal-ity experimental word players. Maybe what Hemingway was once thought to be. Oh, there's the daring Italian writer, Italo Calvino, too, maybe one of the first into the deep end of this particular pool.

I gave Marcus only four stars because his word plays were solely, it often seemed, for their own sake and not to make a point or tell a story or convey information. Sometimes some kind of story emerges; but not often. He sort of tucks his work into jabberwocky, I think maybe a Lewis Carroll term, from that Wonderland Alice, which verged on this genre.

The other writers on my above list make points, tell stories; for Marcus here, it seems word gymnastics are generally enough. They are entertaining, though. Momentarily.
Interesting because they're odd, strange looking for substance. For you, which is more important, what's said or how it's said?

FYI, Marcus also edited this The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories His writer/story choices lean into this style for style's sake sack. (Like that) Many strange for strange sake, which obviously appealed to their editor. Me, I still look forward to post-postmodern stuff.