Fiction is too complicated and too elusive to break down into a set of tricks.
BEN MARCUSFiction is too complicated and too elusive to break down into a set of tricks.
BEN MARCUSIn certain strains of Judaism, there’s a profound passion for the ineffable. Contemplation of God is meant to be forever elusive, because, you know, our tiny minds can’t possibly comprehend Him. If we find ourselves comprehending Him, then we can be sure we’re off track.
BEN MARCUSA self needed to spill out sometimes, a body should show evidence of what the hell went on inside it.
BEN MARCUSRHETORIC 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 MARCUSI’m an enormous fan of Thomas Bernhard’s books, and I like the relentless feeling in his work – the pursuit of darkness, the negative – and I think in some sense I’ve internalised that as what one is supposed to do.
BEN MARCUSSorry, I said to myself, wondering how many times in my marriage I’d said that, how many times I’d meant it, how many times Claire had actually believed it, and, most important, how many times the utterance had any impact whatsoever on our dispute. What a lovely chart one could draw of this word Sorry.
BEN MARCUSSpelling is a way to make words safe, at least for now, until another technology appears to soften attacks launched from the mouth.
BEN MARCUSSlamming 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 MARCUSTo refrain from storytelling is perhaps one of the highest forms of respect we can pay. Those people, with no stories to circle them, can die without being misunderstood.
BEN MARCUSA misspelled word is probably an alias for some desperate call for aid, which is bound to fail.
BEN MARCUSI like big doses of grief when I read: Richard Yates, Flannery O’Connor, Kenzabaro Oe, Thomas Bernhard.
BEN MARCUSRain is used as white noise when God is disgusted by too much prayer, when the sky is stuffed to bursting with the noise of what people need.
BEN MARCUSTeaching is all armchair. I learn about writing by writing and thinking about what I’ve written and throwing it away.
BEN MARCUSMy parents showed me by example that they could balance their work and family lives.
BEN MARCUSEventually you stop paying attention to your own feelings when there’s nothing to be done about them.
BEN MARCUSTo 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