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Every once in awhile you read a book that somehow warps your perspective. On everything. I’m about half done with Ben Marcus’s The Age of Wire and String, which we’re reading for my restrictions & obstructions writing workshop, and I adore it.

I don’t know what it is—it’s certainly not a novel, but calling the individual “chapters” pieces of flash fiction doesn’t seem right either. All these chapters (rarely more than a page or two) do cohere under their section titles, but in a very strange way. Marcus is doing some semantic world-building here, creating a new world through warping language. I have a feeling I will be coming back to this book about a thousand more times in my life.

Enough about me. Here’s one entitled “Snoring, Accidental Sleep” as an example:

Snoring, language disturbance caused by accidental sleeping, in which a person speaks in compressed syllables and bulleted syntax, often stacking several words over one another in a distemporal deliverance of a sentence. The snoring person can be stuffed with cool air to slow the delivery of its language, but perspiration froths at key points on the hips and back when artificial air is introduced, and thus the sleep becomes sketchy and riddled with noise. It is often best to cull the sleeper forth from static communication by responding to its snores with apneic barks—sounds produced without air. The effect of the barks is to isolate each aspect of the snore sound by slowing down the delivery—riding the sleeper until the snore breaks into separate words. Decoders should sit on the bed and jostle the sleeper’s stomach. This further dispatches the clusters that often form when the sleeper speaks all at once (snores). The decoder is then better able to decipher the word blocks. When analyzed, the messages are often simple. Pull me out, they say, the water has risen to the base of my neck.

Put about 40 of those together under headings like God, House, and The Society and you have this book. I should also point out that each section also has a list of terms to better help you (?) understand the text. Terms like:

* shirt of noise Garment, fabric, or residue that absorbs and holds sound, storing messages for journeys. Its loudness cannot be soothed. It can destroy the member which inhabits it.

* Nitzel’s Gamble The act or technique of filling the lungs with water. The chance was first taken by the Nitzel in Green River.

*Jennifer The inability to see. Partial blindness in regards to hands. To jennifer is to feign blindness. The diseases resulting from these acts are called jennies.

I am quite positive that this book isn’t for everyone. But if you read these and found them strange, dense, and fascinating, then consider buying the book. I turn pages in a state of wonder, and that’s no mean feat.

Current Mood: Happy |