A few weeks back, Lance Olsen invited me to contribute some words to “a collage of the words and insights of others” about Ben Marcus, which he would then present at the 2012 &Now Festival held at the Université de la Sorbonne in Paris June 6-10, 2012. Check out the fine results, HERE. An excerpt:
It’s all about vision. The Marcus vision is dark. It is clear and shot through with its special Marcus pessimistic energy, but, as we all know, pessimism is secret code for wild hope and idealism.1 I’ve learned how acutely meaning depends on syntax, and how nimble and able the mind of a reader is when diction has made a rash departure.2 Once, in workshop, Ben instructed us all to bury our food in the backyard for safekeeping.3 If humans are in reality hosts for the virus that is language, Ben, then are you as a writer enslaved? Language made me ask this.4 Paragraphs that surprise you like nests mice make near a warm engine.5 If Marcus is conducting experiments, he’s conducting them out of view, and then unveiling the results as a fait accompli, like an Edison or Tesla or some other secular magician emerging from a laboratory. Marcus’s work, with its powerful kinship to the visual arts and music and perhaps even pharmacology, should less be copyrighted than patented.6
JOHN MADERA—Writer, Editor, Publisher 