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28th out of 101 books
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71 voters
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The Age of Wire and String
by
Ben Marcus (Goodreads Author)
In The Age of Wire and String, hailed by Robert Coover as "the most audacious literary debut in decades," Ben Marcus welds together a new reality from the scrapheap of the past. Dogs, birds, horses, automobiles, and the weather are some of the recycled elements in Marcus's first collection part fiction, part handbook as familiar objects take on markedly unfamilia...more
Paperback, 140 pages
Published
September 1st 1998
by Dalkey Archive Press
(first published 1995)
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Regard the mushroom people: their Vauxhalls are emblematic of an anti-inflatory ecosystem. To decode their literature, commit the following procedure. [1] Insert a zucchini into the Upper Ventilation Shaft, taking time to scalp the rogue dripping insidious seedpeople. [2] Suggest a mode of dance for the staplers. Do not describe their weevils as disrespectful. You risk criticism from the unholy arc of M.J. Nicholls—a disgraceful cannibal among the pigeons. [3] Caulk the skirting boards of the Sh...more
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This book is a nonfiction as fiction piece. It’s organized in sections—each section having about five classifications (I guess I’ll call them) that describe five different aspects of a culture or civilization. The book on the whole, as the forward describes, is meant to catalog this “settlement.” Though, the work is not in English, as we know it. Words are not invented for this project, but the meanings of the words are quite different than those of standard English.
“Albert,” for exam...more
“Albert,” for exam...more
Ben Marcus infuriates me.
I had safely dismissed him as the type of writer I didn't enjoy, but then in the current issue of Tin House he wrote a jaw dropping, throw yourself down the stairs, amazing story; so I had to go back and give his older work another shot.
I'm not quite sure what these stories are supposed to be achieving. I think they are not 'stories' per se, but just parts of a whole that is only being partly exposed in this book. Every so often there is a gr...more
I had safely dismissed him as the type of writer I didn't enjoy, but then in the current issue of Tin House he wrote a jaw dropping, throw yourself down the stairs, amazing story; so I had to go back and give his older work another shot.
I'm not quite sure what these stories are supposed to be achieving. I think they are not 'stories' per se, but just parts of a whole that is only being partly exposed in this book. Every so often there is a gr...more
Patrick
added it
Finally I have discovered what all the "fiction" writers in the College Hill Independent have been ripping off!
At the risk of sounding like a philistine, I will state the obvious by saying this book don't make a lick of sense. Yet I think it does achieve whatever it set out to do, and has the elegance of narrative-spam, or words that form a sentence without much logical meaning, and has the ability to create magical elements or talismans out of the ephemeral detritus/arch pla...more
At the risk of sounding like a philistine, I will state the obvious by saying this book don't make a lick of sense. Yet I think it does achieve whatever it set out to do, and has the elegance of narrative-spam, or words that form a sentence without much logical meaning, and has the ability to create magical elements or talismans out of the ephemeral detritus/arch pla...more
In order to avoid a lot of vague babbling about this book, I'm going to do the cheap thing and leave everyone with a somewhat exemplary passage.
"Words have as little individuality as people-there are moments when any of them will do, provided the parts allow for a thrusting enunciation. The proper use of space is to find out the things we have not said, and how our hands might make sure they stay that way."
What Marcus does offer is a sort of encyclopedia of t...more
"Words have as little individuality as people-there are moments when any of them will do, provided the parts allow for a thrusting enunciation. The proper use of space is to find out the things we have not said, and how our hands might make sure they stay that way."
What Marcus does offer is a sort of encyclopedia of t...more
Experimental fiction is just that. While I like to embrace everything that literature has to offer, I'm always leery of experimental stuff because it either really works, or really doesn't. Case in point here. I couldn't, for the life of me form some kind of attachment to anything in this book. I thought at one point, I'll read it again and make notes and things will begin to make sense, a pattern will start to form, but then I realized I was so bored I couldn't be bothered to do that. I feel li...more
"Experts believe that our bodies grow heavier after being noticed, lighter when touched, and remain the same when left alone."
Terry Clague
added it
"RHETORIC The art of making life less believable; the calculated use of language, not to alarm but to do full harm to our busy minds and properly dispose our listeners to a pain they have never dreamed of. The context of what can be known establishes that love and indifference are forms of language, but the wise addition of punctuation allows us to believe that there are other harms - the dash gives the reader the clear signal they are coming."
I can't give this a rating bec...more
I can't give this a rating bec...more
Crazy. The first piece was awesome, and the whole thing was supremely crafted, (supremely crafted? What does that even mean?), but in the end it was just a little (or really really) too crazy for me. I needed something to grasp. Some . . . something. This has to be the most abstract thing I've ever read. It was just bonkers. So I think I'll rest up, then read it again some time. I read this in one sitting, which is probably stupid.
I'm so stupid.
Maybe I'll go eat worms.
...more
I'm so stupid.
Maybe I'll go eat worms.
...more
I like all 3 of Ben Marcus's books tremendously. I hope he'll come out with another soon. I'm not even going to try to review this author, but I think he defines what might be called the "new wave of modernism" that took place in the early to late 20th century (not that it ever entirely died) and which at least a thousand or more present-day writers and poets regret is beginning to rapidly decline (not that it was ever really that big, even during Gordon Lish's tenure at Knopf: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Lish...more
This is the most exciting book of fiction I've read in a while. It makes me really, really happy. At the (very) start I was resistant, as it reminded me of a lot of contemporary work (poetry) in which "stuff," it seems to me, is just made "up." But as I kept reading, I realized it was much stranger, much more lovely, much more thoroughly imagined. I keep thinking of a blend of: Calvino, Lisa Robertson, and Wittgenstein. The invention is like Calvino, as is the world-building ...more
it's interesting that this came first from ben marcus, and Notable American Women came second. i often think of avant-garde authors going further OFF the beaten path with each effort (think of joyce: portrait->ulysses->finnegans). but this thing was 90% gobbledygook and only 10% semi-comprehensible whacked-out surreal stuff. the 10% was pretty interesting, e.g.:
"They saw other people broken by fast water. Some schemed to escape in this flow, wrapping themselves in rubber fro...more
"They saw other people broken by fast water. Some schemed to escape in this flow, wrapping themselves in rubber fro...more
I feel like I should read this book again before I say anything about it, especially since I started it at 5am last night and finished it around 7am, but here we are. Its beginning is near inexplicable, but by the end the world that Marcus is crafting clicks along like a weird little machine. The book operates on a kind of pyschological impressionism--at times it feels like watching someone act out their dreams with miniatures down in his basement. In the tradition of Barthelme, Coover, Calvi...more
Weird book. I put it in "short stories" because it was described as a "novel," but it might as well be prose poems.
Its setting is a near future where something is wildly different from our world. The eponymous Age of Wire and String is a reference to time, to an era like the Stone Age. In it, Marcus creates a world in which words are the same but definitions vary from their meanings in our English. Each chapter reads like an encyclopedia entry from a dystopi...more
Its setting is a near future where something is wildly different from our world. The eponymous Age of Wire and String is a reference to time, to an era like the Stone Age. In it, Marcus creates a world in which words are the same but definitions vary from their meanings in our English. Each chapter reads like an encyclopedia entry from a dystopi...more
my friend reccomended this book to me because she said, "i found this writer who basically writes like you." so i read it and it kind of made me feel a little bit like shit at first, seeing all these ideas and words and images that seemed exactly like my own, so familiar: horses, sleeping, water, dogs, etc. (not that i thought i'd been original in this, however, even the tone of his sentences felt very familiar). i've since read it a few more times and can see the difference between th...more
I feel like this is a perfect example of what Wallace was talking about in terms of literary fiction going the way of poetry; that is, serious literary fiction being written mostly for other authors and maybe a small, isolated little group of smart readers. Marcus is clearly talented, and he's clearly got something to say, but there's got to be a way to do it that doesn't make the casual reader feel like the victim of an elaborate prank.
Tod Edgerton
added it
Amazing amazing amazing book. Marcus is as much a candidate for our century's Joyce as anyone. He creates a whole un-familar world with transformed and remade and formerly familiar words, "glossary" included. What he seems to unearth is the whole mechanism of world-making that is linguistic-cultural production. Everyone should read this book. It does not explode genre so much as create a brand new one.
This was interesting. The language is beautiful, and from a narrative point of view, it "doesn't make sense." I don't think that's the point though. For me, it worked in a similar manner as Serafini's Codex Seriphanus works; namely, it establishes a world and gives us slight access to it (in both the Serafini & the Marcus we can "read" the details of the world, but we cannot fully understand). Marcus uses language like Serafini uses illustration.
If you would strip the world of your personal conceptions and the anal preconceptions of the ones in charge, this is what you would see.
It is the reality beneath the friendliest gesture.
It is probably the most important book written since Samuel Beckett destroyed us.
You probably didn't realize that. But you have been destroyed. In case you haven't noticed.
It is the reality beneath the friendliest gesture.
It is probably the most important book written since Samuel Beckett destroyed us.
You probably didn't realize that. But you have been destroyed. In case you haven't noticed.
What a marvelous, indescribable book. In some ways, it's a logical next step in the sequence that begins with Perelman and continues with Barthelme. In some ways it's a bit like Burroughs. It really is unique in my experience, though. Marvelous blocks of prose in several genres that just make no rational sense, but they *feel* like they do.
If you want something different. Here it is. And then some.
If you want something different. Here it is. And then some.
I enjoyed reading this book, though I must say I think I was lost most of the time. Very creative, but extremely confusing. I'm not sure I'm smart enough to really enjoy this book. Either that, or I need to understand more what Marcus is doing and read it again.
Age of Wire and String is an experimental book. To me, it was very much about language and our natural predisposition toward trying to find meaning. The point is made mimetically and in a post-modern fashion. Not the most fun read. But ultimately enlightening and unforgettable.
BHodges
added it
A work of experimental fiction, to use a contested descriptor. Marcus's book is a series of descriptive stories, explanations of a strange culture which happens to make use of English. Animals, weather, people, houses, society, etc. Great at stretching the brain a bit.
I love not quite half of this book. (My students made a hilarious short film of "Food Storms of the Original Brother" which showed that they loved that half, too.) This wonderful half of "Wire and String" is inimitably strange and yet familiar, near-sightedly anthropological, full of brilliant collocations: "The Half-Life of Walter in the American Areas," and "Dog, Mode of Heat Transfer." "Swimming, an Inscription" will make you realize that ev...more
Drew Lackovic
rated it
Recommends it for:
Folks who like postmodernist fiction, ontological creation, and structural screwity
Recommended to Drew by:
Kilean
This book is a brilliant enigma. I've written long papers on it and discussed it in length with my friends over at the Warrior Poet Group , and while I think on some levels it is a flawed book, It's a beautiful flawed book. AWS lies somewhere between poetry, short fiction, and a novel, and it refuses to bow to any of the above genres. It's an experiment in ontological creation, and I think it certainly succeeds in giving us exactly what the book's argument calls for: The world of AWS as it i...more
Ok. I liked it, but it is THE MOST STRENUOUS THING I'VE EVER READ. He did something totally original here, and at times it was very beautiful, but it was very very difficult to wade through.
You have never read anything like this before, or at least I never have anyway. Very beautiful. Doesn't start to make sense until days after you have read it.
This book keeps making me contradict myself. I must have told fifty people how much I hate it, but by the time we actually discussed it in my grad school class, I sort of liked it. But then I told somebody I would never read it again as long as I live, and I am already rethinking that. I believe it is just the sort of book that will benefit from many readings, or rather, my writing and I will benefit from reading this many times.
As someone in class said, you really have to sit b...more
As someone in class said, you really have to sit b...more
Amy
added it
I have no idea how to rate this. Definitely didn't love it; but I didn't totally hate it either. Ah well - At least I can say I've finally read it.
Smart abstraction on suburbia-- the stories are told from the perspective of houses. Lost my attention at the end.
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Angelic, transcendent nonsense | 1 | 10 | Apr 05, 2008 10:05pm |
Seemingly the most conspicuous aspect of Ben Marcus' work, to date, is its expansion on one of the most primary concerns of the original Surrealist authors -- perhaps most typified by Benjamin Péret, husband of the acclaimed painter Remedios Varo -- this being a very deep interest in the psychological service and implication of symbols and the manners by which those symbols can be maneuvered and r...more
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“Intercourse with resuscitated wife for particular number of days, superstitious act designed to insure safe operation of household machinery. Electricity mourns the absence of the energy from (wife) within the household’s walls by stalling its flow to the outlets. As such, an improvised friction need to take the place of electricity, to goad the natural currents back to their proper levels. This is achieved with the dead wife. She must be found, revived, and then penetrated until heat fills the room, until the toaster is shooting bread onto the floor, until she is smiling beneath you with black teeth and grabbing your bottom. Then the vacuum rides by and no one is pushing it, it is on full steam. Days flip past in chunks of fake light, and the intercourse is placed in the back of the mind. But it is always there, that moving into a static-ridden corpse that once spoke familiar messages in the morning when the sun was new.”
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