The Flame Alphabet

This is undoubtedly the magnum opus of the three books Ben Marcus has released through the porous borders between the self and the world. The Age of Wire and String (1995) left me baffled and pretty impressed by its unique indexical acrobatics and budding vision of where to take the avant garde prog......more

"I received 500,000 discrete bits of information today, of which maybe 25 are important." -- David Foster Wallace Words kill. John 1:1 might be a mythological fabrication, but in the end there will be the word, some word and then the end. Lights out humanity. Some hateful word, or rhetoric, or bottom......more

This is an extremely dark and ultimately enervating dystopian novel full of disturbing contrasts and ontological concepts. It's the ripest prose I've read this side of China Mieville, but Marcus's story drags on with an all-encompassing dread and relentless anguish. Numerous and grotesque images, ma......more

The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus by J.G. Ballard They had now reached an area where the desert gave way to salt dunes and then to a substantial expanse of water that Travis tentatively identified as the Dead Sea. His wife at first disagreed, but the Jeep contained no maps, and her knowledge of the loc......more

CRITIQUE: "When we came out of the mud we had names": William Burroughs Language is potentially the skeleton that keeps human beings upright and together, both individually and collectively. Language might have helped us to rise and remain out of the mud. What are the repercussions if we lose the capac......more