Writing

Ben Marcus

Jan 31
City Lights, 7:00 p.m.
261 Columbus Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94133
Map

§

Feb 1
Hammer Museum, 7:00 p.m.
with Samantha Hunt
10899 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90024
Map

§

Feb 2
Skylight Books, 7:30 p.m.
1818 Vermont Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90027
Map

§

Feb 7
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 6:00 p.m.
with Sam Lipsyte
37 S. Wabash Ave., Suite 1220
Chicago, IL 60603
Map

§

Feb 9
Prairie Lights Books, 7:00 p.m.
Co-sponsored by the Writer’s Workshop
15 S. Dubuque St.
Iowa City, IA 52240
Map

§

Feb 13
Franklin Park Bar & Beer Garden, 8:00 p.m.
Franklin Park Reading Series
618 St. Johns Place (Between Franklin & Classon Aves.)
Brooklyn, NY 11238
Map

§

Feb 15
The Sky Room at the New Museum, 7:00 p.m.
Bookforum Reading
The New Museum
235 Bowery (Between Prince & Stanton)
New York, NY 10002
Map

§

Feb 21
The College of New Jersey, 4:00 p.m.
2000 Pennington Road
Ewing, NJ 08628
Map

§

Feb 26
JCC of San Francisco, 1 p.m.
Jewish BookFest Panel with Adam Levin (Hot Pink) and Peter Orner (Love and Shame and Love), moderated by Dan Schifrin of the Contemporary Jewish Museum
3200 California Street
San Francisco, CA 94118
Map

§

March 1
Brown University, 2:30 p.m.
McCormack Family Theater
70 Brown St.
Providence, RI 02912
Map

§

March 4
Museum of Jewish Heritage, 2:30 p.m.
36 Battery Place
New York, NY 10004
Map

§

March 8
St. Francis College, 4:30 p.m.
Maroney Theater
180 Remsen Street (Between Clinton and Court St.)
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Map

§

March 12
Housing Works, 7:00 p.m.
With Diane Williams and Deb Olin Unferth
126 Crosby Street
New York, NY
Map

§

March 21
Syracuse University, 5:30 p.m.
Huntington Beard Crouse Hall, Gifford Auditorium
Syracuse, NY 13244
Map

§

March 27
Spoken Interludes, at Riverview, 7:30 p.m.
One Warburton Avenue
Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706
Map

§

April 4
Happy Ending Reading Series, Doors at 6:00, Show at 7:00 p.m.
With Sarah Manguso
Tickets, $15
Joe’s Pub
425 Lafayette Street
New York, NY 10003
Map

§

April 18
Ithaca College, 7:30 p.m.
Clark Lounge, Campus Center
Ithaca, NY 14850
Map (Campus Center)

§

May 16
Lannan Foundation, at Lensic Performing Arts Center, 7:00 p.m.
Interviewing Lydia Davis
Lensic Performing Arts Center
211 W. San Francisco St.
Santa Fe, NM 87501

Map

§

EARLIER EVENTS:

Jan 12
KGB Bar, 7:00 p.m.
with Jim Shepard & Ben Lerner
85 East 4th Street (Between 2^nd & 3^rd Aves.)
New York, NY 10003
Map

§

Jan 17
Philadelphia Free Library, 7:30 p.m.
with Shalom Auslander
1901 Vine Street
Philadelphia, PA 19103
Map

§

Jan 19
BookCourt (The Flame Alphabet Release Party), 7:00 p.m.
163 Court Street (Between Dean & Pacific St.)
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Map

§

Jan 23
McNally Jackson, 7:00 p.m.
with John Freeman, of Granta
52 Prince Street (between Lafayette & Mulberry)
New York, NY 10012
Map

§

Jan 24
BookPeople, 7:00 p.m.
603 North Lamar Blvd.
Austin, TX 78703
Map

§

Jan 25
Tattered Cover, 7:30 p.m.
2526 East Colfax Avenue
Denver, CO 80206
Map

§

Jan 26
University Bookstore, 7:00 p.m.
2322 2^nd Avenue
Seattle, WA 98121
Map

§

Jan 27
Powell’s Books, 7:30 p.m.
1005 West Burnside Street
Portland, OR 97209
Map

§

Published by Knopf on January 17, 2012.

Pre-order here:
Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iBookstore, IndieBound, McNally Jackson, Powell’s

Early comments:

“Language kills in Marcus’s audacious new work of fiction, a richly allusive look at a world transformed by a new form of illness . . . Biblical in its Old Testament sense of wrath, Marcus’s novel twists America’s quotidian existence into something recognizable yet wholly alien to our experience.”
—Publishers Weekly (Starred review and Pick of the week)

“Echoes of Ballard’s insanely sane narrators, echoes of Kafka’s terrible gift for metaphor, echoes of David Lynch, William Burroughs, Robert Walser, Bruno Schulz and Mary Shelley: a world of echoes and re-echoes—I mean ourworld—out of which the sanely insane genius of Ben Marcus somehow manages to wrest something new and unheard of.  And yet as I read The Flame Alphabet, late into the night, feverishly turning the pages, I felt myself, increasingly, in the presence of the classic.”
—Michael Chabon

“The Flame Alphabet drags the contemporary novel—kicking, screaming, and foaming at the mouth—back towards the track it should be following. Ben Marcus makes language as toxic as it is seductive— a virus that comes from  much closer to home than we suspected.”
—Tom McCarthy

“Ben Marcus is the rarest kind of writer: a necessary one.  It’s become impossible to imagine the literary world—the world itself—without his daring, mind-bending and heartbreaking writing.”
—Jonathan Safran Foer

Readings:
KGB, Philadelphia, Book Court, McNally Jackson, Austin,Denver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles – UCLA Hammer, Los Angeles – Skylight, Chicago, Iowa, Syracuse,Ithaca… Complete List of Events

§

Deleted from an early draft of The Flame Alphabet.

§

In bed that night we came as close as we ever had to discussing what we’d heard from Rabbi Burke.  Claire was quiet, directing her energy on getting me to speak first.  I waited her out.  The illness had gifted me with unrivalled patience.  Being patient was just a matter of not caring, and not caring could possibly be connected to something medical.  Symptoms so broad and diffuse encouraged the justification of any behavior.  Anything Claire wanted to say to me she could say without an invitation or outright courtship.  I wasn’t going to beg to hear more of our sorrow.  Or maybe I was, but not so easily.

I leaned over to flip out the light and the darkness felt exquisite on my face.  This was perhaps the most unrivalled moment in all of family life, the switching off of the bedroom lamp.  All obligation ceases.  Hiding, if one so desires, becomes suddenly possible for the first time all day.

The chief virtue of darkness is that people tend to leave you alone.  You can finally go unnoticed.

Beside me Claire huffed, and I rolled over, assumed the pose.

“You’re just going to go to sleep?” she finally said.

“No, of course not,” I said.

I wanted to sound kind, but apparently I did not want it badly enough, so I spelled it out for her, whispering from my side of the bed.

“First I’m going to wait here for you to dump your misery on me, which will no doubt place some kind of blame at my feet, and then I’m going to have trouble falling asleep because I feel a little more like shit than I did before this conversation started.”

She took the upper hand.  “Don’t blame me for how you feel.”

“Ok.  Thanks for the guidance.  Any more advice from Pooh Corner?”

“Yeah, actually,” Claire said.  “Don’t be the asshole who’s already decided on this,” Claire said.

“Ok.  Thanks for the warning.  Consider me hugely undecided.  For all time and forever.”

§

Deleted from an early draft of The Flame Alphabet.

§

Before I returned to the car I noticed a fume cupboard at the top of the embankment, one of the old wooden-style medicinal booths.  Up until now I had only heard rumors. (more…)

§

Deleted from an early draft of The Flame Alphabet.

§

I woke up on my back.  It was minutes later, it was hours, it was days, I wasn’t sure.  Being sure seemed so optional.  Knowing my circumstances, knowing any circumstances, felt like the folly practiced by others.  Good luck, all you fuckers.  (more…)

§

Deleted from an early draft of The Flame Alphabet.

§

I am relating this account through some kind of inhibitor.   I can’t recall the exact name for it.  I have tried my share of them.  This model is not a true inhibitor, since it doesn’t fully block my comprehension of words.  It’s rotted out and it tastes bitter.   It sits wrong inside me. (more…)

§

Deleted from an early draft of The Flame Alphabet.

§

Without consulting Claire I purchased an Esther repellant, an electronic one.  (more…)