4.25.2012
“The Flame Alphabet portrays the emergence of a new kind of human born of a global union of metaphysical and physical suffering. With language we constantly impose doom upon ourselves, be it through religious prophecy or post-apocalyptic fiction, and Marcus gives us a fascinating glimpse of how we might react if that dismal tide of words turned real. If our own intellectual brilliance were to poison us, as it already does every day.”
Read more.
3.6.2012
“Writers and thinkers from Saint Augustine to Paul Celan have lamented the limitations of language, the fallacy that is communication. The theme is hardly new territory for Marcus, whose earlier books play with language as a literary device, but this is the first time the subject informs the content, rather than the structure, of his work. In this novel, which, unlike his previous works, is written in linear, narrative form, the author questions our notions of thought as somehow uncontaminated by the mechanistic forces of life. Characters and even the storyline are secondary, and the novel’s strength lies in its evocation of one man’s search for meaning in a wordless universe.”
2.25.2012
“Wildly inventive in his imagery, Marcus sends drifts of salt to cover the land as the disease takes hold, frozen birds plummet from the skies and hellish packs of children roam the streets and attack helpless adults with the tone of their loud, poisonous voices.”
Full review here.
1.17.2012
In an election year, nasty rhetoric is par for the course. But what if all that toxic language was, well, actually toxic?
That’s the premise of The Flame Alphabet, the new novel by Ben Marcus.
1.16.2012
The Flame Alphabet is a novel at every sentence. It’s also a mystery, a compulsive page-turner and is told in a relatively straightforward, linear way — very few postmodern sleights of hand.
1.9.2012
Amazon Best Books of the Month, January 2012:
From the dark, curious imagination of Ben Marcus comes another brain melter of a novel.
1.2.2012
The Flame Alphabet
Teenagers can be described as toxic, no doubt about it. But in Marcus’ speculative tale, teens are literally poisoning their parents each time they speak.
12.30.2011
Featured Guest Review: Jonathan Lethem on The Flame Alphabet
Ben Marcus is one of the rare inventors in our literary language.
