The Age of Wire and String


"A rare, genius-struck achievement ...
filled with great beauties, high themes, enormous sorrows."






The Age of Wire and String is the definitive handbook for a world hidden in plain sight. Ben Marcus has burned the rust of careless use off the components of daily existence and given us back the objects of our lives burnished as though for their first inspection.
    Ruthlessly anatomical, scrupulously logical (even in its irreducible idiosyncrasy), Marcus' cultural taxonomy is composed in the languages of scientific treatises, diagnostic manuals, and spiritual primers. It guides us through a life filled with the things familiar to our senses--father, milk, birds, Ohio, girls named Jenny (who make us blind)--but in which the conventional relations of these elements to the reader and to one another are radically transformed.


Note: This transformation has been structured in conformity with operational principles entirely of Marcus' devising and revealed in his own time.

    Commended to our attention, for our future use, are new ways to sleep, a better look at God, the secret life of the American house, and the latest strategies for the concealment of weather.
    Here is an indispensable tool for anyone seeking an authoritative, up-to-the-minute understanding of the phenomena of everyday life and willing to accept that anything utterable can also be true. An astounding debut, The Age of Wire and String is a feat of fierce innovation and humor.


Critical Praise for The Age of Wire and String

Undeniably brilliant, amazingly fresh, and strange.

      --Dallas Morning News

Ben Marcus blazes a trail to a new place in literature.

      --Tulsa World, OK.

There's spooky pleasure in these darkly
dreamy stories where even physics is subjective.

      --Details Magazine

The most audacious literary debut in decades.

      --Robert Coover

Maybe two neurotransmitters away from mentally ill writing.

      --L.A. Times

This highly original work will appeal to ambitious
readers of Joyce, Beckett, or other writers who confound our
assumptions about language and perception. A potential cult classic.

      --Library Journal

Ben Marcus's debut volume has a grace,
complexity, and literary ambition that put it at the highest rank.

      --Kirkus Reviews

In a combination of gorgeous, sensuous realism
and disjointed action, Marcus guides us through the
postmodern wreckage of our homes and social customs.

      --Publishers Weekly

A coolly lyrical, sometimes tongue-in-cheek, psuedo-scientific
descripion of the Earth and the life of its various populations...
anticipates a career devoted to intelligent exploration of major theme.

      --Chicago Tribune

All-embracing in its short-circuiting of pop culture,
The Age of Wire and String is indisputably a work of genius.

      --Grid Magazine



Jacket design by David Carson

ISBN: 0-679-42660-4

ALFRED A. KNOPF, PUBLISHER, NEW YORK