The Age of Wire and String: Stories by Ben Marcus is a great book, one of the few that has made me laugh out loud. The anthology made up of a series of interrelated, surreal short fictions accompanied by glossaries of imaginary terms. For an example, here is its definition of a “Wind Bowl”:
Pocket of curved unsteady space formed between speaking persons. They may discuss the house, its grass, some foods, the father inside. The wind bowl will tilt and push across their faces, that they might appear leaning back, arching away from each other, grasping at the ground behind them as if sleeping. (14)
The Age of Wire and String does with language what Codex Seriphinianus [1] does with graphic design: in a thoroughgoing, analytic fashion, the text lays out the absurd so that each step in its incomprehensible arguments seems to follow naturally and intuitively from the previous one. Dream logic reads like logic, opaque mysteries are described in the clear, expository style of encyclopedia entries, form and content clash, reverberate, and play upon one another. As a result, the reader often experiences strange and gratifying “Aha!” moments as fantastic elements seem to fall into place—the hidden relationship between dogs and storms, the nature of ubiquitous, floating food particles. I particularly liked how the text creates expectations through its careful, didactic rhetoric and then promptly explodes them, almost as a joke; in one of the terms sections we are informed that a “Nagle” is a “wooden fixture which first subdued the winter Albert. It occurs in and around trees and is highly brown” (27). Meanwhile, “Tree Bread” is “The victuals in concert with tree systems” (42). Of course.
Like the Codex, The Age of Wire and String is an estranged version of everyday life. The recurring terms are often those most densely packed with association—“food,” “the house,” “dogs,” “the father,” proper names, etc.—words that are redefined and placed in a system of alternative meaning, causing them to become ever more overdetermined as the stories progress. Loaded with this new significance, the personal collapses into the cosmic: all historical or archeological periods occur in the last 30 years, societal shifts are measured in hours, Midwestern states seem to represent the known world. Furthermore, as in magical thinking, the text presents a paranoid world where casual actions or events can have powerful effects, everything is interconnected, and mundane objects contain hidden messages. What’s remarkable about all of this is how well it hangs together: The Age of Wire and String teaches the reader to think a certain way so that, even afterwards, one might find oneself accidentally applying its ideas and nomenclature to the real world (in a not un-Tlönian way).
In sum, it’s experimental, outré, and very enjoyable. All of my poet and non-poet friends should read it.
[1] Codex Seriphinianus by Luigi Serifini is out of print and somewhat rare; I had to do a nationwide ILL search to view it. Used copies will run you $500+. However, there appear to be .pdfs of it floating around on the Internet. If you obtain a copy, drop me a line.
