"The Age of Wire and String"

“…that by looking at an object we destroy it with our desire…”

Surrealist and absurdist Ben Marcus says this fairly early on in his book “The Age of Wire and String”. One would never refer to this slim volume as a novel but more as an epic description of a society. By extension then we can call this a story because society is the grandest (in terms of size) story that can ever be told. Marcus attempts to tell us the story of some culture that simultaneously exists, is extinct and has yet to exist. Between the vagaries and the absurdities of Marcus’ descriptions (they come out as bizarre entries into a grand encyclopedia) one wonders where he actually obtained his source material, what that source material was, what he is manipulating, and when he is actually writing (in the traditional sense of the word). However none of this matters when Mr. Marcus really shines. In a description about eating he is able to bring home the peculiar and ridiculous nature of our most common activity. Another describes an act of home invasion in which the invader confines the family and forces them to witness the invaders suicide. The first works because Marcus has reinvented something that most of us have forgotten to talk about years ago and the second works because it brings the absurd and mixes it with the human for something incredibly visceral. The entry becomes a little too much for words. It may be a stretch to refer to Ben Marcus as a novelist, but it is not stretch to refer to him as a real writer.