The Incendiary Ben Marcus Comes to BookPeople [Reading Preview]

Ben Marcus at BookPeople
Tuesday, January 24
BookPeople (603 N. Lamar)
7pm, Free
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What is wrong with kids these days? In Ben Marcus' new book The Flame Alphabet their words have become toxic to just about anyone who would utter such a question. The epidemic has spread across the country, and found it's way into the Upstate New York community of our narrator, Sam, through his 14 year-old daughter Ester. His wife Claire and he have become very ill over the past few weeks. Their daughter laughs at their frailty, off-put by how meek and quiet they are.

Slowly the couple discover that the words of their only daughter are making them ill, after they make a short recovery when she goes away to a horse camp. When she returns so does their deterioration, petrification of tongue, shortness of breath, and complete lack of energy. Fathers around the neighborhood begin meeting each other on long guilty walks in the wilderness miles from their children's shrieks and roaring laughter. Sam and Claire belong to a religious sect where they listen to anti-language radio broadcasts that are piped through the ground at the same time that they pamper their spoiled and poisonous daughter, who in just a few years will be susceptible to the same word poison.

The story deals with the difficulty of keeping a family together and the devastation of living without a language. Parents all over the country must flee their children and our protagonist is left in the last act alone, attempting to create a new language, without knowing for whom.

Ben Marcus is the author of Notable American Women and The Age of Wire and String. He is a professor of creative writing at Colombia University, and one of the most unique writers publishing today. The hardcover of The Flame Alphabet and its wonderful cover are on sale as of last Tuesday. He will be speaking and signing(with a BookPeople receipt) tonight at 7pm on the second floor. Creepy book trailer embedded below.