Stephen Smith asked Ben Marcus:

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.

flag