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Ben Marcus

Started by garbed_attic, June 19, 2013, 12:58:32 PM

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garbed_attic

I've really been into the curious tactile works of Ben Marcus recently and I was wondering if anyone else on here reads his stuff.

I just ate my way through The Age of Wire and String, which is a sort of anthropological study into the metaphysics of a place where weather and emotions are inextricably intertwined and landscapes are more vital and present than people. Horses seem to be bureaucrats and dogs contract and expand depending on the air ('storm dogs'). It's both highly abstract and deeply embodied and visceral, with lots of sensual writing taken from a DADA GCSE Geography text-book. It's pleasing stuff and the new edition is illustrated.



Then I read his newest, The Flame Alphabet. It is about a disease of language that spreads into a disease of comprehension, that only children are immune to. It plays about, perhaps a little gliby, with Zionist conspiracy imagery. It has a conventional narrative, but is littered with deeply strange objects. It reads a bit like Burroughs and Bartheme and Kafka, I guess, maybe. Trashier, I think. It's unsettling and fairly unpleasant, but compelling.


poloniusmonk

I haven't read any Marcus but have been meaning too - this sort of stuff sounds right up my street. Been given a voucher so think that's where it might go.