November 1st, 2009 / 6:34 pm
 Snippets
—

Reup: an excellent 2002 interview with Ben Marcus at Powell’s.

Dave: Language is central to the novel, the lack of it or the forms it can take. And there’s such a blur between food and language, so much confusion between those two.

Marcus: It’s one of those deep concepts that drives me as a writer. It’s constantly coming out of me. I’m always stuffing cloth in a character’s mouth. I’m always trying to mythologize the mouth, to make language animated so you can see it coming out of people’s heads, destroying objects. It’s provocative to me to look at the body and what the body does as a force of nature. Take the attributes and turn the volume up on them just a tiny bit, or maybe spray them with some revealing jelly so you see a little more than what might be there. In the lie you’re telling there might be some little parable, some revelation of what is real.

I feel so drawn to those notions and metaphors that I feel I can’t write about them any more. It takes three sentences for me before I start writing about cloth. It’s like a fingerprint. So I’ve set a rule for myself that the next book can have no wind, no references to weather, no cloth.

18 Comments

  1. November 1st, 2009 / 11:37 pm Ken Baumann—

      Yes. Really impressed. Thanks, boss.

  2. November 1st, 2009 / 7:37 pm Ken Baumann—

      Yes. Really impressed. Thanks, boss.

  3. November 1st, 2009 / 11:58 pm gene—

      bm shits on everybody. well, not everybody, but a significant of livers. ergh, people who live. bm shits on people who breathe out their mouths.

  4. November 1st, 2009 / 7:58 pm gene—

      bm shits on everybody. well, not everybody, but a significant of livers. ergh, people who live. bm shits on people who breathe out their mouths.

  5. November 2nd, 2009 / 1:15 am christopher higgs—

      When will we finally get to read that next book sans weather & cloth? I’ve been waiting like someone holding a bouquet of dead flowers on the porch step of an abandoned house in the rain for like years and years.

  6. November 1st, 2009 / 9:15 pm christopher higgs—

      When will we finally get to read that next book sans weather & cloth? I’ve been waiting like someone holding a bouquet of dead flowers on the porch step of an abandoned house in the rain for like years and years.

  7. November 2nd, 2009 / 1:36 am Blake Butler—

      i heard him read the opening of the next novel at the brooklyn book festival. it was about children having the ability to use language in speech to the harm of adults, so adults were fleeing their children, or something like that. it was amazing. i hope it comes in full soon.

  8. November 1st, 2009 / 9:36 pm Blake Butler—

      i heard him read the opening of the next novel at the brooklyn book festival. it was about children having the ability to use language in speech to the harm of adults, so adults were fleeing their children, or something like that. it was amazing. i hope it comes in full soon.

  9. November 2nd, 2009 / 1:37 am Blake Butler—

      ‘The Flame Alphabet’ I believe it was titled

  10. November 1st, 2009 / 9:37 pm Blake Butler—

      ‘The Flame Alphabet’ I believe it was titled

  11. November 2nd, 2009 / 1:48 am christopher higgs—

      Fantastic news! This makes an otherwise dreary Sunday in Tallahassee quite bright. Woo-hoo! Can’t wait.

  12. November 1st, 2009 / 9:48 pm christopher higgs—

      Fantastic news! This makes an otherwise dreary Sunday in Tallahassee quite bright. Woo-hoo! Can’t wait.

  13. November 2nd, 2009 / 2:31 am Jack Boettcher—

      I’ve been searching Google for “The Flame Alphabet”+ “Ben Marcus” every week or so since I read a report on The Rumpus alluding to BM reading from that manuscript, maybe at the same festival. But every time, the link from the Rumpus is all that comes up. So I hope we here more soon, too.

  14. November 1st, 2009 / 10:31 pm Jack Boettcher—

      I’ve been searching Google for “The Flame Alphabet”+ “Ben Marcus” every week or so since I read a report on The Rumpus alluding to BM reading from that manuscript, maybe at the same festival. But every time, the link from the Rumpus is all that comes up. So I hope we here more soon, too.

  15. November 2nd, 2009 / 1:28 pm John Madera—
  16. November 2nd, 2009 / 9:28 am John Madera—
  17. November 25th, 2009 / 12:23 am Ashley Crawford—
  18. November 24th, 2009 / 8:23 pm Ashley Crawford—