The Age of Wire and String - Hardcover

Marcus, Ben

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0002256509 ISBN 13: 9780002256506

Publisher: Flamingo, 1997

Synopsis

A potential cult classic – the Finnegans Wake of the 1990s.

A bulletin from a parallel universe where the relations between words and things are utterly changed.

Bewitchingly original, genuinely refreshing, The Age of Wire and String takes all of the linguistic value systems on which our great literature is based, chews them up and spits them out. At once artificial, bizarre and bewildering, this is a Finnegans Wake, a Tristram Shandy for the end of the millennium.

About this title

Review:

‘A rare, genius-struck achievement’
Kirkus

‘A thought-provoking, completely singular work’
Los Angeles Times

‘Stories so undeniably brilliant, so amazingly fresh, yet so strange and at times so preposterous that most readers will be left speechless’
Dallas Morning News

‘The most audacious literary debut in decades’
Robert Coover

‘This doesn’t happen very often. Someone comes out of left field and blows up literature’
Jeffrey Eugenides

‘If you want to find out what you really think, this is the book you should read’
Harry Matthews

‘Utterly wonderful, wonderful and beautiful’
Donald Antrim

From the Back Cover:

'The Age of Wire and String 'is the definitive handbook for a world hidden in plain sight. Ben Marcus has burned the rust of careless use off the components of daily existence and given us back the objects of our lives refreshed as though for their first inspection. Familiar things – father, milk, Ohio, snoring, chicken, girls named Jenny (who make us blind) et al – are loosed from their usual moorings to glide into new relations with each other, with the words that tie them, and with us. When they settle, the reader disembarks in altogether unfamiliar quarters.

Ben Marcus is one of the last fearless literary adventurers – witty and daring, married to logic and invention, intent on reminding us that fiction makes the most lasting shapes, the most indelible marks. This is writing full of the world.

Ben Marcus teaches at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and works as a senior editor for 'Conjunctions', a literary journal.

“If you want to find out what you really think, this is the book you should read. It is a stream of pure oxygen. Ben Marcus’s new world is as baffling as the one we’ve been taking for granted, and magically compelling.”
HARRY MATHEWS, author of 'Cigarettes'

“This is the most audacious literary debut in decades – witty, startlingly inventive, funny but fundamentally disturbing, language itself held together by whimsical bits of wire and string. Ben Marcus is a one of a kind stand up phenom, a comic writer of power and originality. 'The Age of Wire and String' marks the arrival of a unique new talent in American letters.”
ROBERT COOVER

“This doesn’t happen very often: somebody comes out of left field and blows up literature. Ben Marcus describes the operation of an impossible world that, page by page, becomes increasingly plausible and affecting. With the danger of using the degraded language to which this book is the antidote, I’d say that 'The Age of Wire and String' marks the debut of a highly intelligent and exacting literary mind.”
JEFFREY EUGENIDES

About this edition

• Publisher: Flamingo
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0002256509
• ISBN 13: 9780002256506
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 160