Customer Reviews

Notable American Women: A Novel

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

This is not an easy book. It is a difficult book. It is not a conventional book. It is not a conventionally unconventional book. It is challenging. "Hey," it says, "want a fight?"

It is not for people who like happy endings or, for that matter, endings.

Ben Marcus's prose glistens darkly, heavy and slug-like, subtle, sublime and subliminal. You may have to read it aloud to yourself to understand its full weight. If you do this in public, you will be arrested.

If you thought "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" redefined the scope of what a novel could be and threw down the gauntlet to modern writers, then you are unlikely to get beyond the sixth page of Notable American Women. But you're welcome to try.

Not as good as The Age of Wire and String, but the moon is not as good as the sun.

Mr. Marcus seems to be a little misunderstood and rightly so; he is not completely interested in being completely understood as far as I can tell. Notable American Women by Ben Marcus is probably not for everyone (and yes, some books are or should be). First, if you are interested in notable American women, this book isn't about that. If you are happy by nature or genuinely miss diagramming sentences, you may not like this book. I mean that with no innuendo. The book is boldly, perhaps brazenly, creative, cynical and hilarious. But if the near-incessant cynicism is unpalatable to you, it simply won't be that funny. For me, when this book is not completely on the mark nailing Skinnerian human nature (not nailing it to anything, mind you, just hammering it), Marcus' use of language is enough to completely engage me. This book is a matter of words more so than most books. There is great insight, humanity and humor here (I laughed out loud often), but your enjoyment, I think, will ultimately depend on your patience with a creative and relatively unrestrained lyrical prose that is more purely portrayed in Marcus' The Age of Wire and String. In my opinion, a plot helps, so I enjoyed this book more than I did Wire and String. There is talk of Notable American Women being science fiction, I dunno, maybe, sorta, sure. I give it 5 stars because that's how much I liked it.

I first picked up "Notable American Women: A Novel" because (blushing) the cover caught my eye. I didn't know anything about the book itself, nor the author Ben Marcus. It was, as other reviewers have said, very original and unique. The plot is based on lists of what to eat, what to wear, how to act, etc. in Ben Marcus' world, a place where women dominate. However, the plot was where I had my issues with the book. It is up the reader to soak up the bits and pieces of plot from the lists and descriptions, and although some things he points out about our modern culture hits the target dead center, other ideas I had trouble accepting. For readers who are willing to try something new or put a lot of weight on originality, try this book. For all others, read this with an open mind, and be prepared for something VERY different.

This gorgeously writtenl mind-bender of a novel is not for people who are afraid to think. Read it and savor the delicate, bracing flavor of brainpops made of cognitive salami. Masticate crunchy kernels of nostalgia and sadness. Treat yourself by decoding this codex of mysterious time-loops and emotional wordplay. Dress yourself in bacon. Challenge yourself. Read it and weep.

This is an amazing example of using English as a Foreign Language for English speakers. It actually does everything using vowels, consonants, and gears! Picture the following example, where we have removed the clothing and outer plastic shell to look at the underlying framework: When the button on the base is pressed, the song "Ben Marcus" begins to play. After a second or two, the motor begins to spin. It spins in one direction, then changes direction and spins in the other direction in time with the music. The shaft of the motor is connected by a rubber belt to a larger wheel. Using a larger wheel gears the tiny motor down enough to match the timing of the music. Voila -- Notable American Fiction. (This is EXACTLY what reading this book is like.)

When someone writes a straight biography of Ben Marcus, I will be a customer. For this surreal parody of a feminist cult, set in the Ohio of his boyhood, must be in some ways autobiographical, but taken to absurd, imaginative extremes. It would be fun to discover which of the cockamamie inventions, therapies, theories are based partly in fact and which are made up from whole cloth, for most resemble no cult or human consciousness movement I've ever heard of.

But I welcome Marcus as obviously one of the most gifted postmodern authors of his generation, perhaps the most innovative, and often the most hilarious. Now that Beckett and Gilbert Sorrentino are both gone, it's important for serious literary art to be fueled by a sense of humor, and preferably a ferocious one. A mark of general awareness of the human condition? You decide.

Marcus has a huge and varied vocabulary, obviously a feel for the sound of words, and chisels his sentences like a modern-day Flaubert. This is part of the glory of his writing here, and also cause for effort on the reader's part. I didn't find the writing settle into a rhythm that pulled me along, as happens with so much literature, even Beckett's, but a staccato series of sentences and paragraphs, self-consciously hewn. But this is certainly worth the trouble: as with modernist and postmodernist writers from Joyce onward, slowing one's reading pace is well worth the rewards of originality , certainly of Marcus' verbal pyrotechnics.

Other reviews here will make up for what I've omitted in this description, but I wanted to add my own encomiums. Few of the younger generation have risen to take up the challenge left by Beckett, Perec, Calvino, Sorrentino and others; but we have Marcus, presumably at the dawn of a long and rich career, and, happily, writing in our own American idiom.

A surreal manifestation of the brilliant, twisted mind of Ben Marcus, who powers his prose with the dark heart of a poet. Reading him is kind of like meeting a gentle someone on the street who looks you in the eye and tells you he's going to eat your pets.

This is where modern fiction wanted to go all along, a book that will awaken a part of the brain you didn't realize you had lost. It is so powerful and illuminating that you almost forget it might be the funniest book you've ever read.

Just for fun: as you read, occasionally imagine the author's parents reading this. Imagine him explaining to them that the parents in the book are just fictional characters.

Pablo Neruda once said that anyone who doesn't read Julio Cortazar is doomed; I say the same thing about Ben Marcus. I heard him read from this book long ago but he wiped my memory and was dead anyway, at the time. Now, risen from the ashes of genius, he has come to send us over the edge. If you recently wrote a favorable review of a psychological novel, stop wasting your time on this one. Throw yourself onto the sharp bones of postmodernity's corpse and read through the pain. Only in oblivion will you understand.

This may very well be the strangest book I've ever read. (I am excluding work with photos or art.) The language Marcus uses has a very simple pattern, in the way he habitually redefines very common words to recreate their meaning within the context of the larger meaning of the book, but it works. The meaning blooms like a poisonous flower.

The English language is slippery, and its ambiguity is used to great effect in poetry. But Marcus uses the language by re-envisioning the meaning of certain very common words. The word "cult" is invariably used when trying to nail down what this book means. Well, "cults" do redefine common words...just not to this extent. Plus, the book does not apply remotely to any extant cult, so that reference is not too helpful in understanding the book. "Notable American Women" should shake you up.

Hey, Naked Lunch was wild, but this is wilder, IMO.

Like 1984, A Clockwork Orange, and (oh, why not say it) Rush 2112, Notable American Women is a dystopian fantasy. Dystopian is basically the opposite of Utopian. Marcus' imaginary and futuristic world is a society controlled by fascist, totalitarian leaders. In NAW, dystopia is taken to the extreme.

Coincidentally, the protagonist is also named Ben Marcus! It's a tough read at times because of Marcus' invented words. These words exist in the book's world, but not in ours. Whether you like the book or not, you have to admit it IS creative and original. It's also uncomfortable at times, but never boring.

Ben Marcus (the character) exists for the sole purpose of a behavioral experiment and mating (but taking pleasure in it is not allowed). In fact, love, or any other emotions, are forbidden in this society. The ruling women, also known as the Silentists, fear movement of the air so their goal is to keep everyone still and silent as much as possible. His role as a dehumanized object makes him question his own existence at times. I'm not sure that he even knows he is a person, since in one chapter he talks about the joy he finds in his new friend (and lover), yet he doesn't realize that his friend is actually a dog. The dog provides the only "human" contact Ben ever experiences. As bleak, and often disturbing, as the story is there are moments of odd humor in it; including the quote by Ben's father on the back book cover (click on the book on this page, you can read it). Marcus (the author) also weaves a "handbook" into the story, so that you can understand things mentioned in the book e.g. apparatus, diet, etc.

I like unconventional weird stuff, so this book appealed to me, although, I can see how others might not like it. If you're debating whether to read it or not, I say try anything once. It's definitely a new reading experience.