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Notable American Women
Ben Marcus achieved cult status and gained the admiration of his peers with his first book, The Age of Wire and String. With Notable American Women he goes well beyond that first achievement to create something radically wonderful, a novel set in a world so fully imagined that it creates its own reality.On a farm in Ohio, American women led by Jane Dark practice all means of behavior modification in an attempt to attain complete stillness and silence. Witnessing (and subjected to) their cultish actions is one Ben Marcus, whose father, Michael Marcus, may be buried in the back yard, and whose mother, Jane Marcus, enthusiastically condones the use of her son for (generally unsuccessful) breeding purposes, among other things. Inventing his own uses for language, the author Ben Marcus has written a harrowing, hilarious, strangely moving, altogether engrossing work of fiction that will be read and argued over for years to come.
256 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 19, 2002
34 people are currently reading
1975 people want to read
About the author
Ben Marcus
67 books480 followersSeemingly the most conspicuous aspect of Ben Marcus' work, to date, is its expansion on one of the most primary concerns of the original Surrealist authors -- perhaps most typified by Benjamin Péret, husband of the acclaimed painter Remedios Varo -- this being a very deep interest in the psychological service and implication of symbols and the manners by which those symbols can be maneuvered and rejuxtaposed in order to provoke new ideas or new points of view -- in other words, the creation of, in a sense, conscious dreams.
While Marcus' writing plays similarly with the meanings of words by either stripping them of their intended meaning or juxtaposing them with other words in critical ways, it also abandons the 'experimental' nature of so much of the Surrealists' writing for stories that describe human psychology and the human condition through a means that has in later years become notably more subjective and sensory in nature than that used in the broad range of fiction, both 'conventional' and 'nonconventional'.
The surreal nature of Marcus' work derives in part from the fact that it comprises sentences that are exact in their structure and syntax, but whose words, though familiar, appear to have abandoned their ordinary meanings; they can be read as experiments in the ways in which language and syntax themselves work to create structures of meaning. Common themes that emerge are family, the Midwest, science, mathematics, and religion, although their treatment in Marcus's writing lends to new interpretations and conceptualizations of those concepts.
Marcus was born in Chicago. He attended New York University (NYU) and Brown University, and currently teaches writing at Columbia University where he was recently promoted to head of the writing MFA program. He is the son of Jane Marcus, a noted feminist critic and Virginia Woolf scholar. He is married to novelist Heidi Julavits.
While Marcus' writing plays similarly with the meanings of words by either stripping them of their intended meaning or juxtaposing them with other words in critical ways, it also abandons the 'experimental' nature of so much of the Surrealists' writing for stories that describe human psychology and the human condition through a means that has in later years become notably more subjective and sensory in nature than that used in the broad range of fiction, both 'conventional' and 'nonconventional'.
The surreal nature of Marcus' work derives in part from the fact that it comprises sentences that are exact in their structure and syntax, but whose words, though familiar, appear to have abandoned their ordinary meanings; they can be read as experiments in the ways in which language and syntax themselves work to create structures of meaning. Common themes that emerge are family, the Midwest, science, mathematics, and religion, although their treatment in Marcus's writing lends to new interpretations and conceptualizations of those concepts.
Marcus was born in Chicago. He attended New York University (NYU) and Brown University, and currently teaches writing at Columbia University where he was recently promoted to head of the writing MFA program. He is the son of Jane Marcus, a noted feminist critic and Virginia Woolf scholar. He is married to novelist Heidi Julavits.
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February 7, 2012
A wise man once said, "Hell yeah, motherfucker. You're gonna love this." Such wisdom remains etched as it first was at the head of the communication boxes below. Verily, I say unto you, this language vessel rises above the din of most experimental or surreal endeavors. It is surely not the only such book concerned with the nature of language and meaning and reality, or assembled with slyly strung together and unrelenting and astounding oddness, but it does more in the service of agitating the reader's thoughts in those directions in a single chapter than many such books do in their entirety, or that their authorial directors manage to in a prolific lifespan of pursuing the sublime but misplacing their footprints into the merely ridiculous. As another wise man of sorts also once said "There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous." My judgment thermometer says that Ben Marcus maintains his footing on the better half of this righteous line cut through the sand.
One could get the feeling from reading his work that the author is not of this world. Even a glance at his less than typical promotional photo might aid in furthering the suspicion—with the hairless cranium, utterly emotionless mouth, and somewhat haunting stare. The point of view found within these thinly-wrought gutted-tree bits is often comparable to what a visitor from an indescribably foreign world might see; or perhaps how another terrestrial species, if given the ability and/or desire to commune with our grammar and vocabularly, might describe what takes place amongst we humans; and to absorb this POV with one's seeing and thinking cloth is alternately delightful, frightening and forcefully thought-provoking.
Be forewarned, my friends, if your idea of too weird and/or too difficult and/or too unrealistic is to be exemplified by e.g. the tones emitted from Headmaster DeLillo's typewriter or the heavily populated and wending sentence trails of Brother Foster Wallace, you should probably continue running away from the Marcus monographs with mouths twisted into horrified geometries—and this will now be a conscious fleeing, instead of the one in the silent places of yourself, as before. This is not an indictment of any kind, just a plain statement of caution to my fellow travelers who also feel their way about the Earth with the sensory guidance of ink and paper.
The opening chapter would make for the most clever and hilarious Goodreads review of this book. It is a letter that contains the basic sentiment and actual sentence:
And is signed:
"Behold the Strange Miracle and Power of the Word!" is one of the louder things this book would bellow, were it willing and able. If this book does not squeeze thunderous and profound thoughts about language from your pulp, you are reading it incorrectly. Two well-worn U.S. idioms that should be kept in a mildly ventilated mason jar next to you as you read Notable American Women:
The reader was a student in the book's classroom of Perspectivism 101. The reader was assaulted with words that grew into ideas. Root-taking was a euphoric shiver followed by growing pains, followed by serene quiet in the darkened cave where each syllable was a beautiful droplet, each sweet sound held in sustained echo. The reader journeyed to heights and depths, erased meanings and forged new ones. The reader occasionally was spanked by confusion sticks, but loved by the new worlds exposed through the teacher's arsonistic crimes of passion committed against the curtains and walls that would seek to stand in the way of such love.
There are passages to be discovered that appear to have be constructed by a process of such restraint and craftsmenship that it is as if each sentence popped into the one-skulled House of Marcus, one at a time, fully formed ex nihilo, and was carefully extracted with a slow and gentle pinch and delicately set into place upon the page with a silent, pillowed thud. This is in contrast to other great authors of similar persuasion that seem to be in a perpetual wrestling match with a fire hose's powerful spray of thoughts and words, who trim their efforts with artful precision after the open spout's already done its business. The delete key seems eerily absent from the measured and well-paced inscriptions of this strangest of strange creations that continues to elude my own lingual abominations.
Were this reviewer allowed to coin new terms for prose styles, much of this book and a previous Marcus effort (The Age of Wire and String) might be conjoined to the hips or hands of such academic philosophical nomenclature as Eliminative Materialism or Physicalist prose. Wide fields of sentences eschew the function of metaphor and analogy while maintaining the skeletal structure of those things, consequently creating a new physics, a new logic concerning how objects and forces and thoughts stand in relation to one another. There are ripe new items on its vines like listening cloths, behavior smoke, learning ponds, forgetting water, et cetera. A truly newborn ontology awaits thee.
There is an English word, visceral, that gets tossed about when discussing and describing the effects of words; this book contains descriptions so visceral that they laugh at such a word while the letters "v", "i" and "s" hang helplessly from its bloodied maw. The words strange, disturbing, hilarious, weird, brilliant, dark, unique, unnerving, metafiction and even book also scatter in the presence of this series of diverse vignettes tied together by a tale of a cult in Ohio that seeks to trim down the use of language and physical motion until words and movement are annihilated completely.
Language as a weapon, a virulent strain; human activity and mere existence as a mass murderer of air and space; fiction as a lie beyond redemption, and the written word as its ultimate accomplice.
Ben Marcus as insane genius, brought here to save and/or destroy it all.
____________________________________________
For further helpings of book reporting, please see this excellent series of impressions left by the weight of Notable American Women upon Ashley Crawford, a fellow traverser of good reads and Goodreads.
One could get the feeling from reading his work that the author is not of this world. Even a glance at his less than typical promotional photo might aid in furthering the suspicion—with the hairless cranium, utterly emotionless mouth, and somewhat haunting stare. The point of view found within these thinly-wrought gutted-tree bits is often comparable to what a visitor from an indescribably foreign world might see; or perhaps how another terrestrial species, if given the ability and/or desire to commune with our grammar and vocabularly, might describe what takes place amongst we humans; and to absorb this POV with one's seeing and thinking cloth is alternately delightful, frightening and forcefully thought-provoking.
Be forewarned, my friends, if your idea of too weird and/or too difficult and/or too unrealistic is to be exemplified by e.g. the tones emitted from Headmaster DeLillo's typewriter or the heavily populated and wending sentence trails of Brother Foster Wallace, you should probably continue running away from the Marcus monographs with mouths twisted into horrified geometries—and this will now be a conscious fleeing, instead of the one in the silent places of yourself, as before. This is not an indictment of any kind, just a plain statement of caution to my fellow travelers who also feel their way about the Earth with the sensory guidance of ink and paper.
The opening chapter would make for the most clever and hilarious Goodreads review of this book. It is a letter that contains the basic sentiment and actual sentence:
"Forget Ben Marcus and his world of lies."
And is signed:
Your father,
Michael Marcus
"Behold the Strange Miracle and Power of the Word!" is one of the louder things this book would bellow, were it willing and able. If this book does not squeeze thunderous and profound thoughts about language from your pulp, you are reading it incorrectly. Two well-worn U.S. idioms that should be kept in a mildly ventilated mason jar next to you as you read Notable American Women:
"Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words can never hurt me." & "Fill in the Blank is beyond words."
The reader was a student in the book's classroom of Perspectivism 101. The reader was assaulted with words that grew into ideas. Root-taking was a euphoric shiver followed by growing pains, followed by serene quiet in the darkened cave where each syllable was a beautiful droplet, each sweet sound held in sustained echo. The reader journeyed to heights and depths, erased meanings and forged new ones. The reader occasionally was spanked by confusion sticks, but loved by the new worlds exposed through the teacher's arsonistic crimes of passion committed against the curtains and walls that would seek to stand in the way of such love.
There are passages to be discovered that appear to have be constructed by a process of such restraint and craftsmenship that it is as if each sentence popped into the one-skulled House of Marcus, one at a time, fully formed ex nihilo, and was carefully extracted with a slow and gentle pinch and delicately set into place upon the page with a silent, pillowed thud. This is in contrast to other great authors of similar persuasion that seem to be in a perpetual wrestling match with a fire hose's powerful spray of thoughts and words, who trim their efforts with artful precision after the open spout's already done its business. The delete key seems eerily absent from the measured and well-paced inscriptions of this strangest of strange creations that continues to elude my own lingual abominations.
Were this reviewer allowed to coin new terms for prose styles, much of this book and a previous Marcus effort (The Age of Wire and String) might be conjoined to the hips or hands of such academic philosophical nomenclature as Eliminative Materialism or Physicalist prose. Wide fields of sentences eschew the function of metaphor and analogy while maintaining the skeletal structure of those things, consequently creating a new physics, a new logic concerning how objects and forces and thoughts stand in relation to one another. There are ripe new items on its vines like listening cloths, behavior smoke, learning ponds, forgetting water, et cetera. A truly newborn ontology awaits thee.
There is an English word, visceral, that gets tossed about when discussing and describing the effects of words; this book contains descriptions so visceral that they laugh at such a word while the letters "v", "i" and "s" hang helplessly from its bloodied maw. The words strange, disturbing, hilarious, weird, brilliant, dark, unique, unnerving, metafiction and even book also scatter in the presence of this series of diverse vignettes tied together by a tale of a cult in Ohio that seeks to trim down the use of language and physical motion until words and movement are annihilated completely.
Language as a weapon, a virulent strain; human activity and mere existence as a mass murderer of air and space; fiction as a lie beyond redemption, and the written word as its ultimate accomplice.
Ben Marcus as insane genius, brought here to save and/or destroy it all.
____________________________________________
For further helpings of book reporting, please see this excellent series of impressions left by the weight of Notable American Women upon Ashley Crawford, a fellow traverser of good reads and Goodreads.
April 2, 2016
“Except Dark did not speak at night because the darkness lowered her voice so much, it frightened her women. She slept in a sentry harness outside my mother’s bedroom door, her hands dangling like roots, wrapped in the translucent linen that was starting to fill our house, baffling every sound-making thing until nothing more than the smallest whimpers could escape from it. She rested and kept watch. Even sleeping, she muted our house with her long, soft body, a silence that lasted well into the morning.”
Language is a strange thing… Factually the passage is senseless but we try to read into it some esoteric meaning anyway. Or is it just a property of our consciousness?
Notable American Women is an autobiography complete with medical instructions, scientific reminiscences, historical notes, chronological tables, technical data and legal clauses but it is like a Rorschach inkblot so everyone can interpret it one’s own way – even as a lexical dystopia.
“Although this book is for people in general, it is more specifically designed for people who have fallen over, who can’t get up, whose hands hurt and eyes smart, whose limbs are tired on the inside, though doctors might find nothing wrong with them.”
If you’re not one of such then you’d better pass.
All language is either propagandistic lies or misunderstood truths…
Language is a strange thing… Factually the passage is senseless but we try to read into it some esoteric meaning anyway. Or is it just a property of our consciousness?
Notable American Women is an autobiography complete with medical instructions, scientific reminiscences, historical notes, chronological tables, technical data and legal clauses but it is like a Rorschach inkblot so everyone can interpret it one’s own way – even as a lexical dystopia.
“Although this book is for people in general, it is more specifically designed for people who have fallen over, who can’t get up, whose hands hurt and eyes smart, whose limbs are tired on the inside, though doctors might find nothing wrong with them.”
If you’re not one of such then you’d better pass.
All language is either propagandistic lies or misunderstood truths…
October 7, 2014
Understanding a Genius is Overrated
If you were ever confronted by a true genius, how would you deal with them?
Would you just accept them as they are, or would you try to understand what made them so?
Based on my reading of his second book (the first of his I've read), I suspect that Ben Marcus is a genius.
It’s possible that you could learn a lot about "Ben Marcus", one of the narrators, just by reading this book. However, even his fictional mother is dismissive of understanding:
"Understanding is overrated. To hell with it."
Idiosynchronicity
Initially, I felt that Marcus was creating a world that was so idiosyncratic that there was no point in trying to understand it. The whole point was to sit back and enjoy the ride. However, eventually, some level of understanding accumulated on the surface of this impressive brûlée.
It reminded me a lot of a mash up of David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest" (1996), the early short stories of Peter Carey ("The Fat Man in History" (1974)) and the women-focused fiction of another Australian author, David Ireland ("A Woman Of The Future" (1979) and "City of Women" (1981)). (Strangely, all of these authors are men.) Yet, it is still unique in the manner of its telling.
Finding Your Way with Words
The first half seems to be concerned with language. In retrospect, it might be the acquisition of language by the child, Ben Marcus.
He does amazing things with words, these things that he seems to be encountering for the first time. They take the form of secret codes, symbols, signs, social constructs, messages, commands, rulings, that initially seem out of bounds for him. Regardless, he acquires, individualises and masters them.
He gives old words new meanings, and creates a new vocabulary to describe the meaning of the future.
Trying to describe his achievement, words fail me, especially the verbs that are required.
Abstraction Approaches a Traction of Sorts
At the start, his language is incredibly abstract. Or it seems to be.
However, his words are actually simple, but significant. They are never verbose or adjectrivial. They are mostly physical, yet he constructs something metaphysical out of them. This is part of Marcus' genius.
The Sound of Silents
Equipped with the tools of language then, Ben Marcus works his way through adolescence.
You’d expect that he would be more social. But, for some reason, his whole world consists of the Ohio farm that his family lives on.
There are many (notable American?) women on the farm, but his relationships with them are heavily circumscribed, by the rules of a quasi-feminist religious cult (if that's what it is) called "Silentism".
Its core beliefs are controlled breathing, silence, stillness, the absence of movement, the lack of communication. All is self-contained, safe from the outside ("fainting closes off the offending world"), even words. Yet, in this way, life on the farm resembles a prison.
The Muscling of Language
The second half of the book becomes more dynamic, the words more verb-al. The focus moves from childlike abstraction to adolescent rebellion and resistance to the constant "SHUSH!" of authority and the moral lessons that are intended for Ben.
We learn more about Ben as he asserts himself with the "muscling of language". Verbs abound! It's fascinating to watch.
Jesus and Mary Change Names
The authority that seems to oppress Ben is not just social and religious, it’s also parental. It’s his family that is a prison, his home is a "Behaviour Suppression and Elimination Site" (does this sound like the Incandenza family?)
As you finish the book and put it down, you realise that its structure sandwiches Ben between his parents, his father in the first chapter and his mother in the last, Ben in the middle. He is a vowel between two consonants, the "U" between two "SH’s", which up until now have spelled "SHUSH!"
His parents purport to be launching him into society. However, Ben would have us believe that he himself is responsible.
In a way, Ben portrays his parents as Jesus and Mary. Only when he has broken away and started out on his own is it possible that their names might change back to Michael and Jane Marcus. At last, he is free. Write on, Ben Marcus! Genius or not.
"Women might prefer to ‘Shakespeare’ the death moment and draw it out over a full day, while others may find that ‘cartooning’ it is more effective for shame reduction."
ADDED EXTRAS:
Sex (Ohio Lovemaking Stratagem)
All he ever
Desired
Was someone
Who'd let him
Stick his vowel
Between their
Consonants.
In the Lap of the Goddess
He sat in her lap,
Until old enough to slap
Into submission.
Portnoy's Compliant
His role as sire
Allowed no room for error,
Just a liquid send.
SOUNDTRACK:
The Silents - "Nightcrawl"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JExl...
The Silents - "Kingdom, Abhor, Sea"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjbl8...
If you were ever confronted by a true genius, how would you deal with them?
Would you just accept them as they are, or would you try to understand what made them so?
Based on my reading of his second book (the first of his I've read), I suspect that Ben Marcus is a genius.
It’s possible that you could learn a lot about "Ben Marcus", one of the narrators, just by reading this book. However, even his fictional mother is dismissive of understanding:
"Understanding is overrated. To hell with it."
Idiosynchronicity
Initially, I felt that Marcus was creating a world that was so idiosyncratic that there was no point in trying to understand it. The whole point was to sit back and enjoy the ride. However, eventually, some level of understanding accumulated on the surface of this impressive brûlée.
It reminded me a lot of a mash up of David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest" (1996), the early short stories of Peter Carey ("The Fat Man in History" (1974)) and the women-focused fiction of another Australian author, David Ireland ("A Woman Of The Future" (1979) and "City of Women" (1981)). (Strangely, all of these authors are men.) Yet, it is still unique in the manner of its telling.
Finding Your Way with Words
The first half seems to be concerned with language. In retrospect, it might be the acquisition of language by the child, Ben Marcus.
He does amazing things with words, these things that he seems to be encountering for the first time. They take the form of secret codes, symbols, signs, social constructs, messages, commands, rulings, that initially seem out of bounds for him. Regardless, he acquires, individualises and masters them.
He gives old words new meanings, and creates a new vocabulary to describe the meaning of the future.
Trying to describe his achievement, words fail me, especially the verbs that are required.
Abstraction Approaches a Traction of Sorts
At the start, his language is incredibly abstract. Or it seems to be.
However, his words are actually simple, but significant. They are never verbose or adjectrivial. They are mostly physical, yet he constructs something metaphysical out of them. This is part of Marcus' genius.
The Sound of Silents
Equipped with the tools of language then, Ben Marcus works his way through adolescence.
You’d expect that he would be more social. But, for some reason, his whole world consists of the Ohio farm that his family lives on.
There are many (notable American?) women on the farm, but his relationships with them are heavily circumscribed, by the rules of a quasi-feminist religious cult (if that's what it is) called "Silentism".
Its core beliefs are controlled breathing, silence, stillness, the absence of movement, the lack of communication. All is self-contained, safe from the outside ("fainting closes off the offending world"), even words. Yet, in this way, life on the farm resembles a prison.
The Muscling of Language
The second half of the book becomes more dynamic, the words more verb-al. The focus moves from childlike abstraction to adolescent rebellion and resistance to the constant "SHUSH!" of authority and the moral lessons that are intended for Ben.
We learn more about Ben as he asserts himself with the "muscling of language". Verbs abound! It's fascinating to watch.
Jesus and Mary Change Names
The authority that seems to oppress Ben is not just social and religious, it’s also parental. It’s his family that is a prison, his home is a "Behaviour Suppression and Elimination Site" (does this sound like the Incandenza family?)
As you finish the book and put it down, you realise that its structure sandwiches Ben between his parents, his father in the first chapter and his mother in the last, Ben in the middle. He is a vowel between two consonants, the "U" between two "SH’s", which up until now have spelled "SHUSH!"
His parents purport to be launching him into society. However, Ben would have us believe that he himself is responsible.
In a way, Ben portrays his parents as Jesus and Mary. Only when he has broken away and started out on his own is it possible that their names might change back to Michael and Jane Marcus. At last, he is free. Write on, Ben Marcus! Genius or not.
"Women might prefer to ‘Shakespeare’ the death moment and draw it out over a full day, while others may find that ‘cartooning’ it is more effective for shame reduction."
ADDED EXTRAS:
Sex (Ohio Lovemaking Stratagem)
All he ever
Desired
Was someone
Who'd let him
Stick his vowel
Between their
Consonants.
In the Lap of the Goddess
He sat in her lap,
Until old enough to slap
Into submission.
Portnoy's Compliant
His role as sire
Allowed no room for error,
Just a liquid send.
SOUNDTRACK:
The Silents - "Nightcrawl"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JExl...
The Silents - "Kingdom, Abhor, Sea"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjbl8...
February 20, 2012
What follows is a review I wrote on June 13th, 2003 for the book Notable American Women by the author Ben Marcus. It was written for a consumer review website, and that website had some standards for how a review should be written, and I followed them at the time. You'll notice an absence of fucks, they didn't allow cursing, and if there was cursing it had to be censored. I don't think there are any fucks in this review, so you won't see any F***'s, I don't think. I just skimmed through the review, I might have missed a censored fuck or shit. But I'm not writing this prologue to worry about the absence of the foul language I'm sure you've come to love in my 'reviews', instead I feel like this review needs some kind of explanation, but it's an explanation I can't give.
Memory is a funny thing. I'd swear by my memory. I'd get into an argument with someone who says something happened that I have a memory of happening differently and I'd be sure I was right. If we know anything it's what we remember, right?
My memory of this book is that I didn't enjoy it. I don't remember much about the book, but there is a definite feeling of This is something I didn't like.
The truth (apparently, if something like this can even be called a truth) is that I did like the novel. I gave it four stars immediately after reading it. I'd consider this to be suspect if I didn't look at other reviews I'd written at the time and seen that I was in the habit of giving books low numbers of stars and panning them when I didn't like them. I had no reason to like Ben Marcus, there was no peer pressure to like or not like the book. And in the internal feedback / feel good system the other website had, I'd already learned that I generally got more nods of approval by writing scathing reviews where I could really let loose a barrage of venom than I would get for my more tepid style when writing about something I enjoyed.
So what the fuck? What is wrong with my memory? What happened in the years between reading this novel and whatever date it was that I went and slapped two stars on the book here on goodreads? I can remember someone telling me they were going to read this back in like 2006 or so and me telling them I didn't like the novel. If that memory can be trusted then my (false)memory of I don't like this novel can be traced back to at least within three years of when I first encountered the novel.
What happened? Why is my memory so different from what I guess is my actual experience. And what is the actual experience, did I like the book or didn't I? I mean, yeah it looks like I did by this review, but then my feelings on this book are pretty strongly, not-enjoyable. What is true here? How many other books are like this?
There is actually one other that I know of. I have similar feelings for Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq. This one was even read in the more recent time since I've been on Goodreads, and I gave it four stars but my memory of this book is, not-enjoyable / sucks / no more Houellebecq for me thank you. What is true here? How many other books are like this? Have I possibly never not-enjoyed a book in my life? Doubtful. Was I molested by Ben Marcus at some point between June, 2003 and 2006 that made me dislike his book but traumatized me to forgetting the awful thing he did to me? Doubtful, but who knows. Is it just something related to the slipshod mechanics that make up memory? Possibly.
I'm a little concerned about this, I mean what is real? Is my whole past a simulacra of my fragile memory that might have little to do with reality but more to do with something I have no idea about? How much else is just wrong that I think I remember?
With that preamble, here is the original review.
I am generally no strong advocate of breathing. I do not appreciate the labor behind it, the gruesome inflation of the chest, how it fattens a man’s face and advertises his hunger. Something as necessary and regular as breathing should not require such shameful heaving, such greedy shapes of the mouth. There is no civil, polite way to do it without embarrassing oneself. I prefer to hold my breath when I can, to feel warmth spread through my face as my emotional fire stifles inside me without any air to feed it. As much as one inhales even the best of mountain air, the supposedly healthy, rich oxygen of the country side, every breath produces a small disappointment, fails to soothe one’s inner body.
This passage comes on page 155, of the 243 pages that make up Ben Marcus’s strange novel, Notable American Women. As a paragraph from the book it’s as good as any to give you idea of what to expect from the book.
The basic plot (term used very loosely) is the narrator Ben Marcus lives on a farm in Ohio that has been taken over by a radical women’s group attempting to achieve complete stillness and silence. To reach this goal a whole series of behavior modifications are practiced, from prolonged fasting, voluntarily induced fainting and physically restraining one self to purge the body of movement. The groups leader is a women named Julia Dark, a silent and charismatic behavioral engineer who as a teenager learned the devastating effects that certain female all-vowel sounds and expressive pantomime gestures can produce.
Does this all sound confusing? Yeah it does to me to and I’ve read the book. What is impressive that amongst all of the improbable actions, Marcus has succeeded in creating a rich world in a slim volume that makes everything seem very probable.
The structure of the novel makes the work even more confusing though. There is little coherent narrative to the book. The novel opens with a twenty-page letter from Ben Marcus’s (narrator) father. Michael Marcus writing from where he is buried in the backyard structures the letter as a long accusatory attack on the weakness of his son. It reads like the letter you could imagine the father from Franz Kafka’s The Judgment composing as he lies in wait to pass a sentence of death on his ineffectual son. The letter’s an accusation against all sons as failing to live up to their father and lapses into god like delusions of greatness. The irony of course being that he is writing this from a living grave in the backyard, put there by a group of silent women and instead of being omnipotent is quite impotent.
The next three sections of the book are split between five subsections each. The first gives some episodic narrative. After the narrative in each section we are given two subsection of what reads like an instruction manuals for how the group of women go about their lives. The reader is given a general blue print, how to feint, how to fast, what the contract one signs to enter into a stillness group voluntarily among other details about the group. One of these subsections breaks from the others and contains instructions of how to read the book. This subsection by itself is worth checking out this book. It’s absurd, self-deprecating and totally hilarious (much of the novel is though). The final two subsections of each section give a list of dates important in this alternate women’s history, and lists of Women names and their behavioral qualities. (Since a persons name in Marcus’s world make us who we are. All Mary’s for example will have certain traits, unless of course if there are too many Mary’s in a particular region, in which case the name becomes diluted.)
The book ends with a forty-page letter from Ben Marcus’s mother to his father, and helps to solidify the novel.
Comments
If you take the term ‘novel’ literally then Notable American Women is a novel. The book is very unique, and stretches the form of the book in interesting ways. Marcus plays with the language so skillfully that he is able to empty our everyday language of it’s connotations and infuses the words with new meanings. It’s brilliant the way he plays with the language.
The book most reminds me of the worlds that David Foster Wallace brings to the reader; surreal places that take the real world and tweak it just enough to render it horrifying and new. I can’t say that I completely understood the book, and in this review I wouldn’t even try to figure out exactly what the novels about. I think it’s best for the reader to go into this novel relatively blind and make their own impressions of the unique project Marcus embarks on.
Fans of DFW, Thomas Pynchon, John Barth and Dave Eggers will probably get a literary kick out of this work. If you are looking for a straightforward narrative with a clear cut beginning, middle and end this probably isn’t for you. If you are like me and sometimes enjoy seeing what talent writers can do with the structure of the novel when they stretch it in new ways than get this book right now.
Memory is a funny thing. I'd swear by my memory. I'd get into an argument with someone who says something happened that I have a memory of happening differently and I'd be sure I was right. If we know anything it's what we remember, right?
My memory of this book is that I didn't enjoy it. I don't remember much about the book, but there is a definite feeling of This is something I didn't like.
The truth (apparently, if something like this can even be called a truth) is that I did like the novel. I gave it four stars immediately after reading it. I'd consider this to be suspect if I didn't look at other reviews I'd written at the time and seen that I was in the habit of giving books low numbers of stars and panning them when I didn't like them. I had no reason to like Ben Marcus, there was no peer pressure to like or not like the book. And in the internal feedback / feel good system the other website had, I'd already learned that I generally got more nods of approval by writing scathing reviews where I could really let loose a barrage of venom than I would get for my more tepid style when writing about something I enjoyed.
So what the fuck? What is wrong with my memory? What happened in the years between reading this novel and whatever date it was that I went and slapped two stars on the book here on goodreads? I can remember someone telling me they were going to read this back in like 2006 or so and me telling them I didn't like the novel. If that memory can be trusted then my (false)memory of I don't like this novel can be traced back to at least within three years of when I first encountered the novel.
What happened? Why is my memory so different from what I guess is my actual experience. And what is the actual experience, did I like the book or didn't I? I mean, yeah it looks like I did by this review, but then my feelings on this book are pretty strongly, not-enjoyable. What is true here? How many other books are like this?
There is actually one other that I know of. I have similar feelings for Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq. This one was even read in the more recent time since I've been on Goodreads, and I gave it four stars but my memory of this book is, not-enjoyable / sucks / no more Houellebecq for me thank you. What is true here? How many other books are like this? Have I possibly never not-enjoyed a book in my life? Doubtful. Was I molested by Ben Marcus at some point between June, 2003 and 2006 that made me dislike his book but traumatized me to forgetting the awful thing he did to me? Doubtful, but who knows. Is it just something related to the slipshod mechanics that make up memory? Possibly.
I'm a little concerned about this, I mean what is real? Is my whole past a simulacra of my fragile memory that might have little to do with reality but more to do with something I have no idea about? How much else is just wrong that I think I remember?
With that preamble, here is the original review.
I am generally no strong advocate of breathing. I do not appreciate the labor behind it, the gruesome inflation of the chest, how it fattens a man’s face and advertises his hunger. Something as necessary and regular as breathing should not require such shameful heaving, such greedy shapes of the mouth. There is no civil, polite way to do it without embarrassing oneself. I prefer to hold my breath when I can, to feel warmth spread through my face as my emotional fire stifles inside me without any air to feed it. As much as one inhales even the best of mountain air, the supposedly healthy, rich oxygen of the country side, every breath produces a small disappointment, fails to soothe one’s inner body.
This passage comes on page 155, of the 243 pages that make up Ben Marcus’s strange novel, Notable American Women. As a paragraph from the book it’s as good as any to give you idea of what to expect from the book.
The basic plot (term used very loosely) is the narrator Ben Marcus lives on a farm in Ohio that has been taken over by a radical women’s group attempting to achieve complete stillness and silence. To reach this goal a whole series of behavior modifications are practiced, from prolonged fasting, voluntarily induced fainting and physically restraining one self to purge the body of movement. The groups leader is a women named Julia Dark, a silent and charismatic behavioral engineer who as a teenager learned the devastating effects that certain female all-vowel sounds and expressive pantomime gestures can produce.
Does this all sound confusing? Yeah it does to me to and I’ve read the book. What is impressive that amongst all of the improbable actions, Marcus has succeeded in creating a rich world in a slim volume that makes everything seem very probable.
The structure of the novel makes the work even more confusing though. There is little coherent narrative to the book. The novel opens with a twenty-page letter from Ben Marcus’s (narrator) father. Michael Marcus writing from where he is buried in the backyard structures the letter as a long accusatory attack on the weakness of his son. It reads like the letter you could imagine the father from Franz Kafka’s The Judgment composing as he lies in wait to pass a sentence of death on his ineffectual son. The letter’s an accusation against all sons as failing to live up to their father and lapses into god like delusions of greatness. The irony of course being that he is writing this from a living grave in the backyard, put there by a group of silent women and instead of being omnipotent is quite impotent.
The next three sections of the book are split between five subsections each. The first gives some episodic narrative. After the narrative in each section we are given two subsection of what reads like an instruction manuals for how the group of women go about their lives. The reader is given a general blue print, how to feint, how to fast, what the contract one signs to enter into a stillness group voluntarily among other details about the group. One of these subsections breaks from the others and contains instructions of how to read the book. This subsection by itself is worth checking out this book. It’s absurd, self-deprecating and totally hilarious (much of the novel is though). The final two subsections of each section give a list of dates important in this alternate women’s history, and lists of Women names and their behavioral qualities. (Since a persons name in Marcus’s world make us who we are. All Mary’s for example will have certain traits, unless of course if there are too many Mary’s in a particular region, in which case the name becomes diluted.)
The book ends with a forty-page letter from Ben Marcus’s mother to his father, and helps to solidify the novel.
Comments
If you take the term ‘novel’ literally then Notable American Women is a novel. The book is very unique, and stretches the form of the book in interesting ways. Marcus plays with the language so skillfully that he is able to empty our everyday language of it’s connotations and infuses the words with new meanings. It’s brilliant the way he plays with the language.
The book most reminds me of the worlds that David Foster Wallace brings to the reader; surreal places that take the real world and tweak it just enough to render it horrifying and new. I can’t say that I completely understood the book, and in this review I wouldn’t even try to figure out exactly what the novels about. I think it’s best for the reader to go into this novel relatively blind and make their own impressions of the unique project Marcus embarks on.
Fans of DFW, Thomas Pynchon, John Barth and Dave Eggers will probably get a literary kick out of this work. If you are looking for a straightforward narrative with a clear cut beginning, middle and end this probably isn’t for you. If you are like me and sometimes enjoy seeing what talent writers can do with the structure of the novel when they stretch it in new ways than get this book right now.
Read
July 17, 2018Franzen would hate this stuff.
October 3, 2021
The first chapter here is one of the most enjoyable reading experiences one can have. Thereafter, expect all manner of Ben Marcus fuckery. Slowly the young master approaches something resembling convention.
January 8, 2009
Ben Marcus
The Age of Wire and String
Notable American Women
If, in the ‘postmodern’ canon David Foster Wallace made claim to the footnote and Mark Z. Danielewski to crazed typography, then in The Age of Wire and String Ben Marcus has pretty much secured The Glossary as his initial trademark feature.
The Glossary has, of course, been used in fiction before – most recently by Neal Stephenson in his massive Anathem – but never before, as far as I know, has it made up the entirety of a work of fiction. In structure it somewhat resembles J.G. Ballard’s 1969 The Atrocity Exhibition and is reminiscent of Ballard’s book in sheer weirdness. Both authors effectively re-invent the American cultural landscape. But where Ballard used the glossary approach to simply break ‘normal’ narrative flow, Marcus gives us a Users Guide to a parallel universe.
TAOWAS is subtitled “stories” by Ben Marcus and the book could be read as a string of bizarre vignettes, but it can also be read as a strange narrative of a unique world, a “novel”, one that is essentially fleshed out in Marcus’ second book, Notable American Women.
We know there’s trouble afoot when one of the blurbs from the back cover reads: “How can one word from Ben Marcus’ rotten, filthy heart be trusted?” Especially when said blurb is attributed to Michael Marcus, Ben’s father.
Thus begins a truly bizarre, but strangely moving, story of young Ben Marcus’ upbringing. Notable American Women makes Stephen Wright’s seriously dysfunctional family in M31: a family romance, look commonplace. Hunkered down on a remote farm in an alternate Ohio the clearly delusional Jane Dark leads a group of American women to practice “behaviour modification” to attain complete stillness and silence (which, not surprisingly, often leads to death). Marcus’ father is buried alive in the back yard and assailed with “language” attacks. His mother happily encourages the use of young Ben for rigorous breeding purposes for the cults’ younger female followers.
There are moments when one begins to think that Marcus clearly loathes his parents, then others when one wonders what kind of wonderful upbringing could inspire such a fevered and vivid imagination. Working out Marcus’ own position in this chaotic rendering is like juggling mercury or herding feral cats. Does he despise women or love them? Does he despise himself or simply relish the tearing apart of his own physical demeanour to further his story?
The one thing we can be sure of is his true love of language and the power of naming. This becomes decidedly visceral: “Each time we changed my sister’s name, she shed a brittle layer of skin. The skins accrued at first in the firewood bin and were meant to indicate something final of the name that had been shed – a print, an echo, a husk, although we knew not what.” And things get decidedly odd when young Ben starts wearing his sister’s discarded skins or opts to bathe with them.
Language here is a virus. Ben’s father, buried beneath ground, is assailed by Larry the Punisher, whose task it is to blast Michael Marcus with words. Sex is reduced to a “parts consultation.” To avoid language the women practice a grotesque version of pantomine, the complexity of which requires the crushing and removal of certain bones resulting in a “near-boneless approach, when the flesh can ‘rubber-dog’ various facial and postural styles.”
Thematically there are moments reminiscent of Jack O’Connell’s writing in such books as The Skin Palace and Word Made Flesh – the obsession with language as a visceral, physical weapon. In its apocalyptic yet poetic tone it has much in common with Steve Erickson’s work. But at the end of the day Marcus’ voice, in both The Age of Wire and String and Notable American Women, is very much his own.
However that voice would be better described as voices. Ben Marcus the author, as opposed to character, clearly suffers from a delicious form of multi-personality disorder. One moment he is a bureaucrat, listing facts in a soulless liturgy, at others he is the outraged father or the condescending mother. At his most poignant he is simply a young boy staring wide-eyed at the strange world around him.
Multiple-voice narrative is not new (recent successful examples would include Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves and Jack O’Connell’s The Resurrectionist) but Marcus achieves it with such weird subtlety we are seriously thrown off balance. It’s clearly ‘experimental’ but not in the obvious ways employed by Danielewski or David Foster Wallace in Infinite Jest or even by Marcus himself in The Age of Wire and String. Notable American Women is experimental in its willingness to very seriously recreate the world. I suspect Marcus’ Ohio is exactly the same place as Foster Wallace’s Ohio in The Broom of the System, a place similar to, but then so radically dissimilar, to our own.
The Age of Wire and String
Notable American Women
If, in the ‘postmodern’ canon David Foster Wallace made claim to the footnote and Mark Z. Danielewski to crazed typography, then in The Age of Wire and String Ben Marcus has pretty much secured The Glossary as his initial trademark feature.
The Glossary has, of course, been used in fiction before – most recently by Neal Stephenson in his massive Anathem – but never before, as far as I know, has it made up the entirety of a work of fiction. In structure it somewhat resembles J.G. Ballard’s 1969 The Atrocity Exhibition and is reminiscent of Ballard’s book in sheer weirdness. Both authors effectively re-invent the American cultural landscape. But where Ballard used the glossary approach to simply break ‘normal’ narrative flow, Marcus gives us a Users Guide to a parallel universe.
TAOWAS is subtitled “stories” by Ben Marcus and the book could be read as a string of bizarre vignettes, but it can also be read as a strange narrative of a unique world, a “novel”, one that is essentially fleshed out in Marcus’ second book, Notable American Women.
We know there’s trouble afoot when one of the blurbs from the back cover reads: “How can one word from Ben Marcus’ rotten, filthy heart be trusted?” Especially when said blurb is attributed to Michael Marcus, Ben’s father.
Thus begins a truly bizarre, but strangely moving, story of young Ben Marcus’ upbringing. Notable American Women makes Stephen Wright’s seriously dysfunctional family in M31: a family romance, look commonplace. Hunkered down on a remote farm in an alternate Ohio the clearly delusional Jane Dark leads a group of American women to practice “behaviour modification” to attain complete stillness and silence (which, not surprisingly, often leads to death). Marcus’ father is buried alive in the back yard and assailed with “language” attacks. His mother happily encourages the use of young Ben for rigorous breeding purposes for the cults’ younger female followers.
There are moments when one begins to think that Marcus clearly loathes his parents, then others when one wonders what kind of wonderful upbringing could inspire such a fevered and vivid imagination. Working out Marcus’ own position in this chaotic rendering is like juggling mercury or herding feral cats. Does he despise women or love them? Does he despise himself or simply relish the tearing apart of his own physical demeanour to further his story?
The one thing we can be sure of is his true love of language and the power of naming. This becomes decidedly visceral: “Each time we changed my sister’s name, she shed a brittle layer of skin. The skins accrued at first in the firewood bin and were meant to indicate something final of the name that had been shed – a print, an echo, a husk, although we knew not what.” And things get decidedly odd when young Ben starts wearing his sister’s discarded skins or opts to bathe with them.
Language here is a virus. Ben’s father, buried beneath ground, is assailed by Larry the Punisher, whose task it is to blast Michael Marcus with words. Sex is reduced to a “parts consultation.” To avoid language the women practice a grotesque version of pantomine, the complexity of which requires the crushing and removal of certain bones resulting in a “near-boneless approach, when the flesh can ‘rubber-dog’ various facial and postural styles.”
Thematically there are moments reminiscent of Jack O’Connell’s writing in such books as The Skin Palace and Word Made Flesh – the obsession with language as a visceral, physical weapon. In its apocalyptic yet poetic tone it has much in common with Steve Erickson’s work. But at the end of the day Marcus’ voice, in both The Age of Wire and String and Notable American Women, is very much his own.
However that voice would be better described as voices. Ben Marcus the author, as opposed to character, clearly suffers from a delicious form of multi-personality disorder. One moment he is a bureaucrat, listing facts in a soulless liturgy, at others he is the outraged father or the condescending mother. At his most poignant he is simply a young boy staring wide-eyed at the strange world around him.
Multiple-voice narrative is not new (recent successful examples would include Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves and Jack O’Connell’s The Resurrectionist) but Marcus achieves it with such weird subtlety we are seriously thrown off balance. It’s clearly ‘experimental’ but not in the obvious ways employed by Danielewski or David Foster Wallace in Infinite Jest or even by Marcus himself in The Age of Wire and String. Notable American Women is experimental in its willingness to very seriously recreate the world. I suspect Marcus’ Ohio is exactly the same place as Foster Wallace’s Ohio in The Broom of the System, a place similar to, but then so radically dissimilar, to our own.
March 25, 2013
Ben Marcus' writing is a kind of synaesthesia, a movement of once-familiar terms across modalities (language, physiology and medicine, sociology) into the deeply unfamiliar. Those threads of familiarity are strong, though. They lead straight back to the source and can still call up a convulsive empathy. In a book and world as wholly bizarre as this one, this constitutes nearly an act of magic.
Of Marcus' other books, both of which excel in certain ways, The Age of Wire and String is the most visionarily bizarre but may be to trapped in its own language to a point that will always deny true reader access to its mysteries, while The Flame Alphabet is comparatively straight-forward but somewhat reduced in scope and power of synaesthetic program. As far as emotional resonance, the first often denies it through abstraction, the latter through over-design overriding character. To my sensibilities, Notable American Women strikes an excellent balance: personal and mysterious without opacity, universal without reduction, recognizably narrative in a yet-unrecogniable form, and sentence-by-sentence able to evoke the full wonders of language along with an undeniable feeling and quiet desperation.
Plotwise, you're going to have to see for yourself, but it seems to concern the traumatic childhood of the author subject to scientific and distant parental whims. After a certain point, only those of the mother, as we rapidly learn that his father has been buried alive and the house opened to a (cult? militant cell? rogue social scientist enclave?) of women seeking to limit harm in the world by removing speech, motion, and action from it. Naturally, there program requires a certain amount action, and harm, of which our narrator becomes a victim. In a particularly intriguing detail, the leader of the project is Jane Dark, who may or may not relate to this pseudonymous pop writer.
Darkly funny and mysterious, heartbreaking and strange.
Of Marcus' other books, both of which excel in certain ways, The Age of Wire and String is the most visionarily bizarre but may be to trapped in its own language to a point that will always deny true reader access to its mysteries, while The Flame Alphabet is comparatively straight-forward but somewhat reduced in scope and power of synaesthetic program. As far as emotional resonance, the first often denies it through abstraction, the latter through over-design overriding character. To my sensibilities, Notable American Women strikes an excellent balance: personal and mysterious without opacity, universal without reduction, recognizably narrative in a yet-unrecogniable form, and sentence-by-sentence able to evoke the full wonders of language along with an undeniable feeling and quiet desperation.
Plotwise, you're going to have to see for yourself, but it seems to concern the traumatic childhood of the author subject to scientific and distant parental whims. After a certain point, only those of the mother, as we rapidly learn that his father has been buried alive and the house opened to a (cult? militant cell? rogue social scientist enclave?) of women seeking to limit harm in the world by removing speech, motion, and action from it. Naturally, there program requires a certain amount action, and harm, of which our narrator becomes a victim. In a particularly intriguing detail, the leader of the project is Jane Dark, who may or may not relate to this pseudonymous pop writer.
Darkly funny and mysterious, heartbreaking and strange.
April 17, 2016
A world where the act of speaking creates weather disturbances, fathers are imprisoned in holes, women have taken vows of stillness, and language towels stuffed inside the mouth are a must. Ben Marcus makes these absurdist situations at once screamingly funny, oddly tender, and heartbreakingly sad. Imagine an inverted version of "The Handmaid's Tale" with parts of "Tender Buttons" grafted into its DNA and you're still only partway there. A singular achievement and a major American novel.
March 31, 2019
Blurbing two Marcus books today necessarily means I repeat myself. So concision is due: there is nary a page that failed to snap back my head and shatter my face in a rictus of wincing mirth and awe. Skeptical? Pick a number between 3 & 243.
June 20, 2012
I hate this book. I hate it in a way that's difficult to put into words.
It's unapologetically intellectual; I don't mean that as an insult or a compliment, more an observation. There isn't any emotional involvement here, unless you count the love the author has for language itself. Technically, it's inventive and ambitious. I think it succeeds at everything it sets out to do. It's the novel equivalent of listening to deliberately atonal music. There's a staggering amount of talent and intelligence here, and I'm glad this book exists.
I just hate it.
It's unapologetically intellectual; I don't mean that as an insult or a compliment, more an observation. There isn't any emotional involvement here, unless you count the love the author has for language itself. Technically, it's inventive and ambitious. I think it succeeds at everything it sets out to do. It's the novel equivalent of listening to deliberately atonal music. There's a staggering amount of talent and intelligence here, and I'm glad this book exists.
I just hate it.
February 24, 2024
I’m meditating on this, the last of his first three books, which I would describe as the language-illness triptych. I would like to be in the position to write a report of how this is so and its effects and implications. That would take a lot of effort. Instead, I’ll probably just read all three in a different order again.
July 19, 2011
ben marcus's book is as good as it is off-putting. i got hypnotised at times by the reinvention of language - the way he describes the activities, beliefs and diets of the followers of jane dark (a movement of women who strive for complete stillness and silence, using a vowel-only language, eating nuts and specially brewed water, and soaking up the angry air of sound and emotion [mainly created by men] with pieces of linen). fascinating stuff, and beautifully written throughout.
i was carried along for quite a good while on this cadence of what seemed to be the best kind of allegory: a fully developed concept that suggests quite a few sympathies and satires of the known world, but never exactly lines up for a perfect fit ...
oddly, i could (quite honestly) never suss out if it was feminist or misogynistic. and by the end, it just seemed like the weirdly veiled story of an impotent bald man struggling to leave home after his father has died and his emotionally stunted, man-hating mother has taken up with a lesbian yoga & granola cult.
i was carried along for quite a good while on this cadence of what seemed to be the best kind of allegory: a fully developed concept that suggests quite a few sympathies and satires of the known world, but never exactly lines up for a perfect fit ...
oddly, i could (quite honestly) never suss out if it was feminist or misogynistic. and by the end, it just seemed like the weirdly veiled story of an impotent bald man struggling to leave home after his father has died and his emotionally stunted, man-hating mother has taken up with a lesbian yoga & granola cult.
August 6, 2007
my friend farmer brown was always telling me to read this, and i was always asking him, is it, like, history? when he sent it to me, i read it. it's definitely not history. it's fiction, and the best i can say about it is that sometimes, reading on my morning subway commute, i had to close the book and quick distract myself just to keep from throwing up. i mean, it's one of my favorites.
March 29, 2021
La novela que más me ha gustado de lo que llevamos de año. Ben Marcus es un escritor extrañamente brillante.
December 6, 2011
This book is very strange, and I didn't know what to make of it for a while. Ben Marcus is a boy living in a cult of women who believe in silence and at times communicate with motion and other times want to ban motion. They also try to use Ben for breeding purposes. The bulk of the book is Ben explaining the rules and history of the cult, but from the perspective of someone who has always lived within its confines...basically, the book reads very clinically at times. I was ready to dismiss it for being too high concept and clever for its own good, but the bookend chapters are written from the perspective of Ben's parents. The first is Ben's dad and is easy to overlook because you haven't been bombarded by the oddness of the book to follow, but the final chapter is from the mother's point of view. As she is the one who joins the cult, her view is an interesting one...something about this last chapter made the previous chapters worth reading, if only to lull you into a state to appreciate the end. There's also a definite strand of dark humor throughout this book so absurd, but memorable.
July 14, 2017
Maybe he didn't know it at the time, but when Admiral Akbar yelled his now-famous warning ("It's a trap!"), he could have just as easily been talking about language. The way it shapes us, the way it labels us, the way it restricts and controls us. (It has a few positive aspects, too, but let us not digress.)
Joking. Digression is next to godliness. Or is that digestion that induces cleanliness which then.. ? Some where some body keeps track of these things. Probably a Ben Marcus. Many a Ben Marcus would do this sort of thing. The Ben Marcus associated with this novel has created quite a unique piece of fiction that eludes classification (translation: Beware ye readers seeking plot or closure.). But don't take my word for it:
And we approach this new age of Silence and Stillness through a family unit that is part of this greater societal trend. A movement this book catalogs, classifies, and at times leads by instruction. It is a world stripped of pleasure, mostly in a state of paralysis because of the harm that every movement and utterance causes. The body as purveyor of damage and control. It's various secretions become behavior-inducing concoctions. Best not to move or speak. The origin for this new movement reads like some sort of esoteric feminism and has seemingly led to women controlling a fair amount of society in a series of methodical, scientific experiments and discoveries. Seemingly, because Marcus keeps the reader in the dark, no more able to escape and get an omniscient bird's eye view than the characters trapped in the story. Vowels of silence ensue. Emotions are quashed. A great deal of humor infects the narrative delivery and you waver between laughing in good humor and laughing uncomfortably.
Yesterday I gave this three stars. Today I bumped it up to 4 because it is still making me think and smile even after my attempt to silence it with its own covers. I might have to add this to my special multi-volume care package for expectant mothers, which currently consists of Geek Love, We Need to Talk about Kevin, and The Fifth Child.
Joking. Digression is next to godliness. Or is that digestion that induces cleanliness which then.. ? Some where some body keeps track of these things. Probably a Ben Marcus. Many a Ben Marcus would do this sort of thing. The Ben Marcus associated with this novel has created quite a unique piece of fiction that eludes classification (translation: Beware ye readers seeking plot or closure.). But don't take my word for it:
"This book is unfortunately designed for people. People are considered as areas that resist light, mistakes in the air, collision sweet spots. At the time of this writing, the whole world is a crime scene: People eat space with their bodies; they are rain decayers; the wind is slaughtered when they move."It then goes on to warn:
"Nor are any other emotions technically supported here. Readers looking to indulge in the having of emotions (HOE) should do so on their own time, in small bursts, preferably in a closed room, coughing often into an absorbent rag and wringing the rag down a drain."
And we approach this new age of Silence and Stillness through a family unit that is part of this greater societal trend. A movement this book catalogs, classifies, and at times leads by instruction. It is a world stripped of pleasure, mostly in a state of paralysis because of the harm that every movement and utterance causes. The body as purveyor of damage and control. It's various secretions become behavior-inducing concoctions. Best not to move or speak. The origin for this new movement reads like some sort of esoteric feminism and has seemingly led to women controlling a fair amount of society in a series of methodical, scientific experiments and discoveries. Seemingly, because Marcus keeps the reader in the dark, no more able to escape and get an omniscient bird's eye view than the characters trapped in the story. Vowels of silence ensue. Emotions are quashed. A great deal of humor infects the narrative delivery and you waver between laughing in good humor and laughing uncomfortably.
Yesterday I gave this three stars. Today I bumped it up to 4 because it is still making me think and smile even after my attempt to silence it with its own covers. I might have to add this to my special multi-volume care package for expectant mothers, which currently consists of Geek Love, We Need to Talk about Kevin, and The Fifth Child.
March 11, 2018
I really enjoyed this novel. Brief as it may be, it is full of wild imagination, surreal humor, and deeply unusual characters. In all honesty, it was one of the most genuinely strange novels I’ve read in years, and I mean that in the most positive sense of the word.
The story mainly concerns the rearing of an unfortunate male child named Ben Marcus, a pathetic human specimen raised essentially by committee. The Silentists, a cult of sorts presided over by the mysterious Jane Dark, in conjunction with Ben’s own mother, raise the poor guy according to Silentist doctrine and put him to use in service of their cause. The uncomfortable (yet often strangely humorous) scenarios and commentaries that arise from this time spent in service to the Silentists, and in observance of them, make up the bulk of this novel; it doesn’t tell a linear story as much as it vividly documents the particulars of the strange, dark, fascinating world that Ben Marcus (the author, not the character) has created.
I won’t spoil anything, but I think my very favorite section was the one concering the relocation and removal of excess bone in women’s bodies so as to allow them mastery over the various forms of mime that are seemingly essential to Silentist life.
Notable American Women, while not perfect, is a beautifully written display of daring imagination and absurd humor, in addition to being perhaps the most boldly unique and warped take on the “coming of age”-type novel I’ve read since Kathy Acker’s Blood & Guts in High School. Highly recommended.
The story mainly concerns the rearing of an unfortunate male child named Ben Marcus, a pathetic human specimen raised essentially by committee. The Silentists, a cult of sorts presided over by the mysterious Jane Dark, in conjunction with Ben’s own mother, raise the poor guy according to Silentist doctrine and put him to use in service of their cause. The uncomfortable (yet often strangely humorous) scenarios and commentaries that arise from this time spent in service to the Silentists, and in observance of them, make up the bulk of this novel; it doesn’t tell a linear story as much as it vividly documents the particulars of the strange, dark, fascinating world that Ben Marcus (the author, not the character) has created.
I won’t spoil anything, but I think my very favorite section was the one concering the relocation and removal of excess bone in women’s bodies so as to allow them mastery over the various forms of mime that are seemingly essential to Silentist life.
Notable American Women, while not perfect, is a beautifully written display of daring imagination and absurd humor, in addition to being perhaps the most boldly unique and warped take on the “coming of age”-type novel I’ve read since Kathy Acker’s Blood & Guts in High School. Highly recommended.
November 1, 2020
I can say without a doubt that I’ve never read a book quite like Notable American Women. Marcus’s writing is deeply strange—at times funny, at times deeply disturbing. You’re thrown right into this unusual world with a disorienting introduction from Ben Marcus (the character’s) father, in which he tells you his son is a liar and not to believe a word he says. There’s an uncanny effect that comes from the author and the protagonist sharing a name, I can’t quite describe it but it adds even more strangeness.
The final pages are written from the mother’s perspective as a scathing letter to the father. What lies in the middle is bizarre and perplexing- historic dates in the Silentist movement, names of women and their meanings, Ben’s experiences growing up in this movement, and descriptions of some of their core beliefs. In this world, motion is violent. Silence is a healing choice. Emotions are frowned upon. Silence and gestures and fainting can cleanse you of unwanted emotions.
Everything is bizarre, sometimes horrifying, often sad, but so peculiarly, also hilarious in some moments!
I really don’t know what to make of this book. It’s a lot to puzzle over, and I’m sure you could glean more and more from subsequent readings. It’s not the kind of book where you fall in love with the characters or the story moves you, but it’s incredibly inventive and unique.
The final pages are written from the mother’s perspective as a scathing letter to the father. What lies in the middle is bizarre and perplexing- historic dates in the Silentist movement, names of women and their meanings, Ben’s experiences growing up in this movement, and descriptions of some of their core beliefs. In this world, motion is violent. Silence is a healing choice. Emotions are frowned upon. Silence and gestures and fainting can cleanse you of unwanted emotions.
Everything is bizarre, sometimes horrifying, often sad, but so peculiarly, also hilarious in some moments!
I really don’t know what to make of this book. It’s a lot to puzzle over, and I’m sure you could glean more and more from subsequent readings. It’s not the kind of book where you fall in love with the characters or the story moves you, but it’s incredibly inventive and unique.
January 9, 2022
Truly one of the oddest things I've ever read. The world building is terrifying and hilarious in equal measure, which produces such an eerie feeling in me. For that experience alone, I found this thing to be worth reading.
The story is about Ben Marcus, a boy cheekily named after the author. He lives in a feminist cult in Ohio that's obsessed with achieving perfect stillness - no breathing, no eating, no emoting whatsoever. He's used for breeding and is completely and utterly neglected otherwise.
The amount of bizarre (yet logically consistent) rituals and procedures Marcus spins from this premise is always astounding, sometimes engaging - and often way too much. The opening and closing monologues by Dad and Mom did so little for the exposition, and frankly, the ideas expressed within were repetitious enough to give me PTSD flashbacks to Barthelme.
Regardless, this was a trip - an inconsistent, uncompromising, fascinating experience.
The story is about Ben Marcus, a boy cheekily named after the author. He lives in a feminist cult in Ohio that's obsessed with achieving perfect stillness - no breathing, no eating, no emoting whatsoever. He's used for breeding and is completely and utterly neglected otherwise.
The amount of bizarre (yet logically consistent) rituals and procedures Marcus spins from this premise is always astounding, sometimes engaging - and often way too much. The opening and closing monologues by Dad and Mom did so little for the exposition, and frankly, the ideas expressed within were repetitious enough to give me PTSD flashbacks to Barthelme.
Regardless, this was a trip - an inconsistent, uncompromising, fascinating experience.
September 26, 2013
Any attempt to describe this book is confusing.
Roughly speaking, it is a book made out of language.
Language is the main character.
The language is set in a Midwest that is as abstract as the landscapes in Wallace Stevens poems, and concerns a cult of women who ritualize stillness and silence.
There is another character, a boy, the narrator who lives among the women as a kind of captive in a war between the sexes.
That war is described in the lyrical and formal epistolary language of diplomacy, though you're never sure what country or continent or even time.
It gets under your skin, the way a haunting modern dance performance might. It just so happens that the dancers are nouns and verbs and adjectives and long galloping sentences.
Read it.
Roughly speaking, it is a book made out of language.
Language is the main character.
The language is set in a Midwest that is as abstract as the landscapes in Wallace Stevens poems, and concerns a cult of women who ritualize stillness and silence.
There is another character, a boy, the narrator who lives among the women as a kind of captive in a war between the sexes.
That war is described in the lyrical and formal epistolary language of diplomacy, though you're never sure what country or continent or even time.
It gets under your skin, the way a haunting modern dance performance might. It just so happens that the dancers are nouns and verbs and adjectives and long galloping sentences.
Read it.
May 13, 2019
Phenomenal. Not for everybody, but the work of an extraordinary writer.
September 30, 2007
So surreal and weird, and fixated on language almost to the point of feeling clinical, but an amazingly personal story too. Marcus is one of the most experimental writers out there, but, surprise surprise, not boring at all.
February 21, 2018
DNF at 77%. I "fainted" and just didn't care to go on. Deeply tiresome shit. Bind me in a clear sock and mark me as dead because I can't imagine finishing this without falling into profound slumber. A waste of time.
August 21, 2007
Marcus continues his language parade with this odd autobiography from some dystopian otherworld (maybe a world thought up by Borges and Barthelme). Absolutely strange beauty.
July 14, 2020
I'm so glad I have been listening to Welcome to Night Vale and reading their books for years. While this is in an entirely different world, the weirdness, the constructed universe that bears tangential relationship to our own, but not really, has prepared me for a book like this. No amount of description can do this justice, just go into it with an open mind and be prepared to constantly imagine something so real but so not at the same time.
November 12, 2024
After part 1, the object (certainly not a novel) keeps itself out of context from then to The Launch.
There are Silentists and a lot of women fucking a fictional Ben Marcus in some weird non consensual sci fi time out. What a fine day for science.
Reading this book often feels like doing training modules without getting paid. Like reading a new convoluted Yugioh card with many restrictions to keep it from being on a ban list immediately.
The closest thing I’ve read to this would be Plus by McElroy or something in the realm of Russel Edson.
A book of ideas without a tether.
There are Silentists and a lot of women fucking a fictional Ben Marcus in some weird non consensual sci fi time out. What a fine day for science.
Reading this book often feels like doing training modules without getting paid. Like reading a new convoluted Yugioh card with many restrictions to keep it from being on a ban list immediately.
The closest thing I’ve read to this would be Plus by McElroy or something in the realm of Russel Edson.
A book of ideas without a tether.
November 28, 2023
Perhaps the best book I ever did read. Changed forever from the first section.
I still remember… sophomore year of high school… on my bed ATTACKING this book with a highlighter and a pen.
Reinvents literature, changes the game.
I still remember… sophomore year of high school… on my bed ATTACKING this book with a highlighter and a pen.
Reinvents literature, changes the game.
May 11, 2025
I had no idea of the similarities between Marcus and George Saunders until reading this. Not sure who stole from whom, but since I think Saunders is wildly overrated, I'm going to say he stole from Marcus, who is more of a mad scientist in their overlapping zones while Saunders is more of a tourist.
January 14, 2021
I LIKE
LET'S START A CULT SOMEDAY, OK?
LET'S START A CULT SOMEDAY, OK?
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