reading notes

by Ben Marcus

ISBN: 0375713786

I’m not entirely sure why I finished this book.

It is very odd (the book itself, not that I finished it.) It says it is a novel, and I suppose it is if you are going to be elastic in your definitions. So it is an unconventional novel about a fictional cult, the Silentists, who have some bizarre ideas about wind, motion, fabric, women, and child-rearing.

The book doesn’t exactly center on, but is more or less about the story of Ben Marcus (apparently a “first son” of the cult) and his family. The opening chapter is an introduction addressed to Ben (and the reader) by his father Michael Marcus, then end chapter is addressed to Ben’s father and is written by his mother, Jane Marcus. All the chapters in between are observations by Ben, dates and names in Silentist history, a legal document, things like that. It is a bit convoluted a story, told completely from inside the world of the cult.

The story, twisted and chopped up, reveals the complete failure of Michael and Jane as parents. I’m tempted to say it shows the collapse of their family, but I don’t know that the family was ever in a solid enough state to be called collapsible. Puzzling through the book is a bit like being one of the three blind men feeling an elephant — as a reader you can’t be sure what it is you’ve got in your hands so you keep groping along, hoping to figure it out.

So yes, this book is work to read and that is not a bad thing. Marcus’s writing is controlled, with odd flashes of humor and profanity. There is a lot of “what the hell?” going on reading this book — I suppose what propelled me through it was, in part, seeing if I could answer what the hell was going on, seeing if it would make sense in the end.

This is the kind of book susceptible to charges of being difficult for the sake of being difficult, of being purposefully obtuse in hopes that readers would fear to appear ignorant and so call it profound, or of following or trying to set some literary trend.

I do see the arguments in favor of saying these things about Notable American Women, but I don’t think that is what Marcus has done. (As much as I really do not like it when authors write characters with their own names into their stories because it is generally too something, too precious a thing to bear, I suppose I can’t unreasonably hold this against him.) I think he tried to do something different, and it isn’t easy to create a different take — a radically different take — on the American Family. Mostly, I think he succeeded, because he can write. Doesn’t always make for the most enjoyable reading, though.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 5th, 2003 at 4:08 pm and is filed under fiction.