Ask the Author: Ben Marcus

“I'll be answering questions this month for the paperback publication of Leaving the Sea. Fire away.

—Ben Marcus” Ben Marcus

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In a buzzing world of noisy entertainment material scripted and unscripted, and with people flipping rapidly through screens of messages and news and "content," what would you say that fiction is for?

Ben Marcus In the New York Times today (Nov. 7, 2014), the inestimably great writer Joy Williams, reviewing Denis Johnson's new novel, has this to say:

"A writer should write in such a way that nobody can be ignorant of the world and that nobody may say that he is innocent of what it is all about. ...Life is ludicrous and full of cruel and selfish distractions. Honor is elusive and many find the copious ingestion of drugs necessary. Our ignorance is infinite and our sorrows fearful. We have made an unutterable waste of this world, and our passage through it is bitter and unheroic. Still, the horror can at times be illuminating, and it is necessary that the impossible be addressed."

I don't have much to add beyond that.

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Do you feel Surrealism has influenced your work?

Ben Marcus There was a time, when I was 17 or 18, that surrealist painting felt like a huge revelation, and relief. A door opened to a massive territory that I realized I also contained within me, but hadn't known it was ok to release. Surrealism felt immensely liberating, funny, weird, heartbreaking. For a while I could not get enough of it. In writing, Donald Barthelme's work had a similar effect. Incredibly liberating to read.

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Mr Marcus, 'The Flame Alphabet' shocked me into a literature-induced coma for a few weeks, and it was its originality that drew me to it. Some pieces of literature inspire, and it was a combination of your style and storyline that inspired me. I'm a bit starstruck! So, do you ever have to make yourself feel something to be inspired? Many, many regards, Alycia AUS 17yo

Ben Marcus Thank you!
I suppose I do need to make myself feel all sorts of things. I have a lot of doubt when I'm working, and I give up on projects probably too often. If I don't care about something I'm working on, it's ridiculous to think that anyone else will. So I dress things up, change them, destroy them, until they look pretty enough to attack. I guess the whole process of starting a new book is a kind of courtship with myself — but I'm not a very fun person to date.

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Thanks for drawing my attention to books like, MOTORMAN and LOG OF THE SS THE MRS. UNGUENTINE (the later now one of the most important books to me). Are there any other little known masterpieces you want to shine a light on, either old or new? Thanks again.

Ben Marcus I would add The German Picturesque, by Jason Schwartz, to this list. Published a decade ago, soon to be reprinted. It is mysterious, menacing, gorgeous, and baffling in the best possible way. A genre unto itself, like nothing I've read before.

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Sherman Alexie once said that every piece of fiction is at least semi-autobiographical. Do you think it's possible (or neccesary) to avoid that happening?

Ben Marcus I don't see why we'd want to avoid it. Some of this is semantical, anyway. To me, there's a kind of emotional autobiography sometimes in what I write. It's rarely explicit. Even if the story is fantastical, and beyond the realm of explicit possibility, I hope it's driven by real feelings, and there's always going to be a link back to the writer in some way.

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What, if any, is the relation between language's reduction-to-concept function and the trope in your work of language being physically harmful to use/experience?

This answer contains spoilers… (view spoiler)

Are you grammar obsessed (more prescriptive grammar, I guess) at the Gary Lutz/David Foster Wallace level? Are there grammar rules that you still can’t seem to get a grasp on?

This answer contains spoilers… (view spoiler)

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Ben, is there an ongoing metaphor between meteorology and psycholinguistics running through Notable American Women, The Age of Wire and String, and to a lesser extent, The Flame Alphabet and certain selections of Leaving The Sea? If not, sorry I asked. If so, what was the most traumatic weather related event of your childhood? You don't have to say if you don't want to.

Ben Marcus I got into weather in kind of a backwards way, during a youthful fascination with boredom. I wrote a whole bad novel in school called Secret Weather. It hurts to even remember it. For some reason, with little skill and no experience, I thought I should try to make writing even harder for myself, and this involved taking on the notoriously boring topic of weather. Of course weather is not boring at all — it is just boring to talk about. Anyway, it got into my language, and then it just became part of some sort of engine that sometimes turns on.

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Ben, So amazing you're answering questions! Thank you. How do you have the time? Seriously how do you fit in writing? What does a writing day look like? What does an average day look like, writing or not? Do you have tips for organization/productive practice?

Ben Marcus I do my best to work when I'm not teaching. I can usually find a bunch of hours in the week. Harder for me is working when I don't have anything I am excited about, like, uh, now. If I don't feel obsessed, I'd just rather do something else: make a dough, go two-wheeling. And yet I know that I will most likely only become obsessed through work. That's how I'll discover what I most want to do, hacking at nothing. I tend to give advice about this that I don't follow myself. Work anyway. Work relentlessly. Write something obviously terrible just to get some writing done. Then you can claw at until it's pretty, or ugly in a pretty way.

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Hi Ben, I was wondering if you're still on the superfoods? If so, are they doing anything for you? And what about no salt, no oil, no sugar?

Ben Marcus Oh, superfoods. Bitter and repulsive powders that carry medicinal amounts of vitamins and nutrients. I guess I still dabble. But I prefer real and tasty food, until something better comes along. As to no salt, no oil, and no sugar? No way. I don't want to live pleasure free. Even if pleasure is a trap that will kill us.

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This is in connection with your love of the short story (& the upcoming anthology you edited). Can you recommend 5-10 best short story collections published 2000 onwards? Thank you very much, Sir!

Ben Marcus Sure.

THE FUN PARTS — Sam Lipsyte
TWILIGHT OF THE SUPERHEROES — Deborah Eisenberg
EVERYTHING RAVAGED, EVERYTHING BURNED — Wells Tower
GOLD BOY, EMERALD GIRL — Yiyun Li
ONE HUNDRED APOCALYPSES — Lucy Corin
AMERICAN INNOVATIONS — Rivka Galchen
MINOR ROBBERIES — Deb Olin Unferth

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I was wondering -- based on the many instances of etymological, semiotical, philosophical, and theological metaphors and constructions -- if you approach your writing from a point of searching, reaching out to an idea or (a) language(?), or do you (perhaps, voraciously) consume etymologies and philosophies, then pare them back and re-arrange them into the language(s) you're creating for your writing(s)?

Ben Marcus Hey Tommy,

Hm. I like the idea of voraciously consuming etymologies and philosophies, but I probably side with the first option. Blind groping, unintentional trajectories, mistakes.

Thanks for the question.

Ben

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Hi Ben, I feel that there is a sense of anxiety in your work about the effects of medical technology on our ability to sustain relationships. Do you feel like the medicalization and pathologization of our emotional and mental states (as well as our physical bodies) affects our ability to navigate the bonds of love, family, friendship, etc?

Ben Marcus Yes.

I wanted to leave it there, but Goodreads wouldn't let me. But the complications that arise from our own constant assessments of how we feel are deeply fascinating to me, and the source of a tremendous amount of tension and drama.

So, yes.

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How do you convince yourself that what you experience is good enough to be wrestled down into words? Your characters in Leaving the Sea seem like they would have a problem with saying "listen to me." How do you respond to the polar demands of writing: to keep humbly honest (laughing with everything like Saunders), and stay fearlessly self-important (laughing at everything like Joyce)? What happens to your boast/doubt?

Ben Marcus My doubt grows and gets fat every day. It is a near constant. Only when I'm actually typing does it subside for a bit. But your first question: how do I convince myself that my experience is good enough to be written about. Honestly I don't want to write too directly from my experience. I want the writing to be a new experience, some concoction that creates something new, using old and dull pieces of me. I'm not a big fan of writing too directly about stuff that's happened to me, but writing makes it into a new thing anyway, so this is something that doesn't worry me so much.

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Can/will 'difficult' literature survive the waning attention spans of even the dwindling # of 'serious' readers (outside the Academe and perhaps even within)? And do you find yourself easing away from esotericism (felt like Flame Alphabet was much more 'readable' than previous work)?

Ben Marcus I do my best not to think about the distinction between kinds of writing, because I'd like to work in many modes, and maybe fuse them all, or just forget that there are modes. I do think transparency and momentum have their thrills, but there's something immensely appealing, to me, about complex, mind warping sentences that are necessarily slower at the narrative level. After I finished writing LEAVING THE SEA, I wrote a short piece called "Notes from the Hospital" that swung back the other way, I guess. Right now I'm looking to attempt both things at once.

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there are many ways in which the thing I am trying in vain to say may be tried in vain to be said - Beckett Language acts as an acid over its message. If you no longer care about an idea or a feeling, then put it into language. - Marcus You also describe it as 'a more sophisticated way to cry'. Do you think this understanding of the self-defeating telos of language is a necessary evil?

Ben Marcus Steven: Love that Beckett quote. So is it, as you ask, a necessary evil to feel that language is self-defeating? I doubt it. It's pretty easy never to think of it, to just open our mouths and freely moan all over each other. Self-consciousness about the limitations of language is a kind of curse. But Beckett made it pretty funny, too.

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Hello Ben, Not many writers can knock me off my feet with a short sentence; you're one of the few that can. Do you have an opinion on whether self-publishing is a viable route for the "experimental" writer? Or on smart strategies for a writer situated a long, long way from academia (MFA's, writing courses etc)? At times it can seem like a cloistered (and well-defended) world...

Ben Marcus Hey Robin, it's a really good question. I think it's a great time for new forms of distribution. But is it a great time for sheer interest in writing as an art form? So hard to say. The people who do care about it care as if their lives depended on it. Maybe it's easier than ever for us to find our few readers, but the harder question is how to connect to those readers who don't explicitly know that they'll like something unusual or innovative. Self-publishing has come a long way from its vain roots, but curation of some kind still seems to offer a sense of assurance to a lot of people. Can these forces be combined?

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After I read it, I felt like Notable American Women rewired my brain. When working with unusual sentences that can achieve this effect do you do more in initial drafts or in extensive revision?

Ben Marcus Thanks, Dan. It's been a while since Notable American Women came out, so my memory is probably suspect. But I'm pretty sure I wrote some passages of that book quickly. The thicker, weirder sentences take a lot of labor. There's no way to just spew that stuff out, though I wish I could. I guess I do a lot of fine-tuning and cutting, until things start to sound ok. I am ridiculously slow.

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I feel I have noticed a lot of birds in your fiction. Except they don't really seem to be real birds. Do you attach any particular thematic weight to birds, whether real or unreal?

Ben Marcus Are any birds real, if they are in fiction? I'm not sure why my birds would seem less real than some other fiction writer's birds. How does one add reality to imaginary birds? I'd like to know.

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As a writer who writes in a great tradition of the more esoteric and experimental vein of fiction, how do you explain your work to people who probably will not understand it (when they read it), or to those that you can be certain will not understand it?

Ben Marcus I don't. That way no one gets killed, no one is harmed, no one grows sad or uncomfortable. I don't think I can assist understanding, or enjoyment, with some magic sentence or two.

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