December 18th, 2011 / 7:45 pm
 Snippets
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“When he was nineteen, writing La Doublure . . . Roussel felt a literal brilliance running all throughout his person, his writing implements, and his room. The light was so dazzling he had to draw the curtains, afraid that anyone who saw him would be blinded by the rays streaming out of his face.” — Ben Marcus

16 Comments

  1. December 18th, 2011 / 8:08 pm M. Kitchell—

      Roussel is my favorite self-important ego-maniac.  Locus Solus is perfect.

  2. December 18th, 2011 / 8:19 pm lily hoang—

      I’m posting a fan letter to Ben Marcus tomorrow. How apropos. 

  3. December 18th, 2011 / 8:28 pm Ken Baumann—

      hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh

  4. December 18th, 2011 / 8:28 pm Anonymous—

      can you type the rest of the article?

  5. December 18th, 2011 / 8:40 pm bartleby_taco—

      on a scale of 1 – 10, should i ignore this pile of books that is becoming more desk furniture than reading material and read locus solus instead?

  6. December 18th, 2011 / 8:41 pm reynard—

      i sure can!

  7. December 18th, 2011 / 8:46 pm Brooks Sterritt—

      This reminded me I need to read Impressions of Africa. Awesome quote.

  8. December 18th, 2011 / 11:23 pm reynard—

      but i’m not going to

      A limbless man operates a music machine. A marksman blasts the albumen off a soft-boiled egg perched on a post. A man named Luovic, who “had managed to split his lips and tongue into independent portions,” renders a flawless four-part vocalization of “Frère Jacques” A bird activates a wagon that runs on tracks made from calves’ lungs, perhaps the most enviable image I have ever encountered in a novel. A father and his six sons erect a human echo machine using only their bodies. The father positions his boys throughout a field, like baseball players, then barks a sound that bounces from each son’s chest. A brain-damaged young man is healed by a hypnotizing apparatus that drugs him while he watches films of his childhood. In a set piece predating Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony,” a man is killed by having a document he forged inscribed with a burning poker into the soles of his feet. Less menacingly, a water-driven loom produces photorealist textiles “on a par with master paintings.” And lozenges dropped into a river dissolve to reveal the image of dancers on a banquet table. The narrator, watching the spectacle, observes that “the liquid drawing was so detailed that in places one could make out the shadows of crumbs on the tablecloth.”

      it’s a good issue though you should check it out, hamilton morris on haitian zombies & a thing on bruce chatwin

  9. December 19th, 2011 / 3:10 am reynard—

      all numbers are imaginary

  10. December 19th, 2011 / 4:08 am M. Kitchell—

      i’m confused about urgency lately, so who knows, i guess it depends on what’s in the pile of desk furniture.  it’s on my “canon” for sure tho.

  11. December 19th, 2011 / 2:40 pm 88888888888888888888888—

      6/7

  12. December 19th, 2011 / 4:24 pm reynard—

      it’s in my cannon too

  13. December 19th, 2011 / 4:30 pm reynard—

      if ben marcus had a trillion readers the world would be a triller place

  14. December 19th, 2011 / 8:51 pm ZZZZZIPPP—

      THE HAITIAN ZOMBIES THING IS SO GOOD PEOPLE KEEP “LIKING” ZZZZIPP’S BATHROOM 

  15. December 19th, 2011 / 11:21 pm Anonymous—

      rad

  16. December 20th, 2011 / 11:19 am herocious—

      all numbers are imaginary