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A misspelled word is probably an alias for some desperate call for aid, which is bound to fail.

Ben Marcus

I like big doses of grief when I read: Richard Yates, Flannery O’Connor, Kenzabaro Oe, Thomas Bernhard.
BEN MARCUS

Bigs Dose Grief
Teaching is all armchair. I learn about writing by writing and thinking about what I’ve written and throwing it away.
BEN MARCUS

Teaching Thinking Writing
The common, the quotidian, is so much more unyielding to me, really stubborn and hard to work with, and I like this because it makes me think and it makes me worry. I can’t just plunge my hand into the meat of it. I need new approaches.
BEN MARCUS

Hands Thinking Worry
Slamming the book shut produces a wind on the face, a weather that is copyrighted by the author, and this wind may not be deployed without permission, nor may the pages be turned without express written permission.
BEN MARCUS

Book Copyright Permisson Weather Wind
Mostly we’re motivated to control ourselves in public. Mostly. At home the motivation is much less clear. At home there’s a bit of a lab for bad behavior.
BEN MARCUS

Home Labs Motivation
I’m interested in the hope we invest in science, and the disappointment we can feel when science flattens, or ‘explains,’ the larger mysteries of religion.
BEN MARCUS

Disappointment Feels Mystery
When I started writing at 18 or 19, I had a fear of anything autobiographical, but I’ve come to realise that my writing is very autobiographical at the emotional level.
BEN MARCUS

Emotional Level Writing
In some sense, prose fiction is just a way of unlocking a space. If I can unlock the space, it comes out and it’s vivid, I find that I care about it, and it’s part of me.
BEN MARCUS

Care Fiction Space
Spelling is a way to make words safe, at least for now, until another technology appears to soften attacks launched from the mouth.
BEN MARCUS

Mouth Safe Technology
You can test things out without terrible consequences. Or maybe the consequences are there, but they are deferred, buried, much harder to detect.
BEN MARCUS

Consequences Detect Terrible Test
It’s lonely to listen to the pleasure of others, not that I’ve made a habit of that kind of eavesdropping. There’s joy and passion in the next room, in the next bed, but it’s not yours.
BEN MARCUS

Joy Lonely Passion
To me one of the amazing technologies of writing is the way it can listen in on thoughts. I don’t feel that that’s natural to other art forms in the same way.
BEN MARCUS

Art Feel Listen Technology Writing
Being with him was like being alone underwater – everything was slow; nothing counted; I could not be harmed; I would feel dry and cold when I resurfaced.
BEN MARCUS

Alone Being Like Love Underwater
RHETORIC The art of making life less believable; the calculated use of language, not to alarm but to do full harm to our busy minds and properly dispose our listeners to a pain they have never dreamed of.
BEN MARCUS

Art Believe Calculate Harm Language Pain Wise
Fiction is too complicated and too elusive to break down into a set of tricks.
BEN MARCUS

Breaking Complicated Down Fiction
My parents showed me by example that they could balance their work and family lives.
BEN MARCUS

Balance Example Parent

A misspelled word is probably an alias for some desperate call for aid, which is bound to fail.

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A misspelled word is probably an alias for some desperate call for aid, which is bound to fail.

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Popular Authors

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