The Age of Wire and String - Softcover

Marcus, Ben

Softcover

ISBN 10: 000655086X ISBN 13: 9780006550860

Publisher: Flamingo, 1998

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:

‘Transfixing... an extraordinary debut... The Age of Wire and String, a treasury of interconnected fables of violence and hope, stands out as an exhilarating work of literature. Multiple readings are rewarding.’
Steven Poole, TLS

‘Frequently touching and funny, plenty of madness, magic and gods... a cross between a scientific manual, Monty Python and a kind of Bible, with a surreal and opaque logic of its own.’
Christina Patterson, Observer

‘The Age of Wire and String evades classification, persisting in your mind because of its psychotically ardent prose... It will find its fans among those people who relish prose that mimics dream, who love it when words are used as they once were, as incantations, as spells to summon up the contorted beings of the imagination.’
Matthew De Abaitua, The Idler

‘The most audacious literary debut in decades’
Robert Coover

From the Back Cover:

"'The Age of Wire and String' evades classification, persisting in your mind because of its psychotically ardent prose. It contains no debased images, no second-hand symbols. It will find its fans among those people who relish prose that mimics dream, who love it when words are used as they once were, as incantations, as spells to summon up the contorted beings of the imagination."
MATTHEW DE ABAITUA, 'The Idler'

"Transfixing...an extraordinary debut. The pervasive tone of the book is elegaic: buried among its leaves is a testament to personal loss, whose fragmented inscription gestures movingly at a sorrow that is too great for words; it is perhaps in this tragedy that the book's unique style has its genesis. Most contemporary fiction is afraid to make the reader work hard for understanding, and in consequence the reader's rewards are smaller. But 'The Age of Wire and String', a treasury of interconnected fables of violence and hope, stands out as an exhilarating work of literature. Multiple readings are rewarding."
STEVEN POOLE, TLS

"Intelligent and good-humoured, I believe this novel has a place within the chaotic tradition of Sterne's 'Tristram Shandy'. It follows that, if novels are to reflect the complexities of the modern world, they must take on some of its messy characteristics. There is no shortage of confusion here, in a book which describes itself as 'a catalog of the life project', as prosecuted in a time of uncertainty."
ANDREW BISWELL, 'Daily Telegraph'

"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 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

"Frequently touching and funny, plenty of madness, magic and gods...a cross between a scientific manual, 'Monty Python' and a kind of Bible, with a surreal and opaque logic of its own."
CHRISTINA PATTERSON, 'Observer'

About this edition

• Publisher: Flamingo
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 000655086X
• ISBN 13: 9780006550860
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160