The Father Costume

by Ben Marcus, Matthew Ritchie

Behold a stunning world, composed largely of water, where clothing changes people's behavior and time itself can be worn and discarded like cloth. Witness a father who takes his two boys out to sea, in flight from some menace at home, thus launching their adventures in a strange and dangerous territory. Artist Matthew Ritchie's striking images blend scientific diagramming with vivid, colorful renderings of the apocalypse, while writer Ben Marcus's cold prose plumbs the inner workings of two boys caught out at sea with a father whose costumes grow increasingly menacing. In this collaborative work, Ritchie's and Marcus's shared obsessions of mythology, physics and ancient texts have produced a conjunction of text and image in which people themselves are merely costumes for the darker needs that drive them.

Genres: Fiction

56 pages, Hardcover

First published May 15, 2002

About the author

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 rejuxtaposed in order to provoke new ideas or new points of view -- in other words, the creation of, in a sense, conscious dreams.

While Marcus' writing plays similarly with the meanings of words by either stripping them of their intended meaning or juxtaposing them with other words in critical ways, it also abandons the 'experimental' nature of so much of the Surrealists' writing for stories that describe human psychology and the human condition through a means that has in later years become notably more subjective and sensory in nature than that used in the broad range of fiction, both 'conventional' and 'nonconventional'.

The surreal nature of Marcus' work derives in part from the fact that it comprises sentences that are exact in their structure and syntax, but whose words, though familiar, appear to have abandoned their ordinary meanings; they can be read as experiments in the ways in which language and syntax themselves work to create structures of meaning. Common themes that emerge are family, the Midwest, science, mathematics, and religion, although their treatment in Marcus's writing lends to new interpretations and conceptualizations of those concepts.

Marcus was born in Chicago. He attended New York University (NYU) and Brown University, and currently teaches writing at Columbia University where he was recently promoted to head of the writing MFA program. He is the son of Jane Marcus, a noted feminist critic and Virginia Woolf scholar. He is married to novelist Heidi Julavits.

Reviews

[Pawl Schwartz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think that the key to understanding this book is in abandoning all notions of language as we know it (which is hard and rediculous, as this is a book, made of the written word.)

This is a scenario that is post-spoken language, where communication is visual, as well as personal. Some cahracters talk to themselves by barking into leather bags and listening back to it later, some put on different costumes. This is a completely alien world that goes beyond the tropes of sci-fi and fantasy and actually creates a new world with new laws, where communication is tangible and physics as well as character dynamics work in a completely alien way. Good stuff, takes some work, don't know if I could stand to get through his longer stuff (in a good way).

[Andrew Metadrouid · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly experimental and evocative writing, uncompromising in its inscrutable symbolism. And the art works so well with it

[Dustin Saunders · Rating 5 out of 5]

A favorite from Leaving the Seas. The illustrated colab is a great stand alone piece.

[Printable Tire]

So much of this seems obfuscating-for-obfuscation's sake, but when it works, man:

"I wish I could see my father's name. I would not know the grammatical tense that could properly remark on my father. There is a portion of time that my own language cannot remark. A limitation, probably, in my mouth. In this portion of time is where my father is hidden. If I learn a new language, my father might come true. If I reach deep into my mouth and scoop out a larger cave. If I make do with less of myself, so that he might be more.

It would be easier to hold a magnifying glass to the scrap of my father's shirt that still remains. To focus a hot cone of sunlight through the glass onto the fabric that once concealed him. Then the last of him could be burned, and in the sound of the flame a small message might be heard. I wish that his name occurred in nature. I could point to the sky and my gesture would indicate him better than any of my own noises ever could. I wish there was a new man who looked like my father. I could grab hold of him if he rowed by. I could enter his clothes so that he would never float. Hide in the extra space between his body and the cloth. Drag him down into the water, the two of us sinking double-time, down to where all of the people are waiting."

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

dishonesty is good, feelings are bad.

[Dawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not mad at it because it helped me.

[Jessica]

Saw Ben Marcus read from Notable American Women with his poor maligned parents present ... fortunately I guess they are ottally nice people and nothing like the villains in his books!

[Nfpendleton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book scares the hell out of me. The book design and illustrations complement the text perfectly.