I was lucky enough to catch writer Ben Marcus last night at the Hammer Museum’s ‘New American Writing Series.’ For those of you not familiar with Marcus’ work, I highly recommend you check him out. I have posted a few samples of his work before on this site. His work has been described as  “surreal, but not dada; fantastic, but not fantasy or sf; mysterious, but not a mystery; fiction, but not exactly.”  Marcus himself wrote in his introduction to The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories that “Stories keep mattering by reimagining their own methods, manners, and techniques. A writer has to believe, and prove, that there are, if not new stories, then new ways of telling old ones.” Robert Coover wrote, “Ben Marcus has been accused of redesigning the ordinary sentence, of emptying words of their meaning and injecting them with new, and of blowing away traditional narrative structures with a diabolical wind.” 

Ben read from a work in progress about a family who has a lodger and the sinister things that happened during his stay in the family home. The son of this family is the narrator and as the story progresses, the reader (or listener as it were) wonders if this peculiar narrator can be trusted. Ben has a low voice that hypnotizes the listener, and coupled with the subtle yet jarring use of language, I was drawn into the story before it dawned on me the Son-narrator might just be downright dangerous.

During the Q & A Ben said that he was inspired by the stories of James Purdy and how his narrators seem completely believable and ‘comfortable’ in the beginning but progressively become creepier as the story progresses. I asked him about his collaboration with artist Michael Ritchie on the book “The Father Costume” and he said it came out of his and Ritchie’s affinity for the same themes (“killing people with cloth, science, and God”) He was supposed to collaborate with artist Matthew Barney but he, Barney, was booked up for 5 years(!)

Well-known Bookworm host Michael Silverblatt asked him if experimental fiction can eek out a place in today’s cultural landscape (referencing Barthleme and Hawkes) and what affect it has on the experimental writer. Ben said yes, it challenging but that’s when the best work comes out. (Paraphrased)

No pics cause I was a bit shy and nervous. Maybe next time though. Very fun and inspiring!