Effie

Effie asked Ben Marcus:

Ben Marcus! I love your stories! I picked up Leaving the Sea after George Saunders named you as one of his favorite current writers (!) during a reading at NYU. That line that goes something like, fathers are here to temper babies from loving their mothers too achingly (is my memory anything like the original? I don't have your book with me), I remember that line when I look at my parents.

Ben Marcus Hey Effie, thank you. I think this is the passage, from a story called "Rollingwood (in Leaving the Sea):

Mather stands there in the dark living room. There won’t be a boat ride. He knows that. She’s showering so much love on the boy that he will become dazed by it, then Mather will have to take over and the boy will be bitterly disappointed again. To Mather these intense displays of love are what he must help the boy recover from. Fatherhood has somehow become about helping his boy not love his mother too painfully.

More Answered Questions

Steven Felicelli

Steven Felicelli asked Ben Marcus:

there are many ways in which the thing I am trying in vain to say may be tried in vain to be said - Beckett Language acts as an acid over its message. If you no longer care about an idea or a feeling, then put it into language. - Marcus You also describe it as 'a more sophisticated way to cry'. Do you think this understanding of the self-defeating telos of language is a necessary evil?

Robert

Robert asked Ben Marcus:

As a writer who writes in a great tradition of the more esoteric and experimental vein of fiction, how do you explain your work to people who probably will not understand it (when they read it), or to those that you can be certain will not understand it?

Tom Buchanan

Tom Buchanan asked Ben Marcus:

Hi Ben, I feel that there is a sense of anxiety in your work about the effects of medical technology on our ability to sustain relationships. Do you feel like the medicalization and pathologization of our emotional and mental states (as well as our physical bodies) affects our ability to navigate the bonds of love, family, friendship, etc?

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