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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
excellent in conception, sagging in execution, 6 Jan 2000
By A Customer
The "age of wire and string" initially strikes the reader as a wholly impenetrable onslaught. Words are detached from their conventional meanings, syntax is choppy and frequently highly ambiguous, and it is often difficult to discern quite what the subject of each chapter (or prose poem, of sorts) might be. However, perseverence does reap benefits. It soon becomes clear that, although to a great extent Marcus' apparent purpose is at least initially to disorientate the reader, the new meanings of his words do seem to have fairly fixed meanings. That is to say, they tend always to be used in similar ways with other similarly dislocated words, such that "Thompson" comes to denote some sort of godhead, "weather" a threat, a fear of violence or of exposure, and "the family" a subterranean refugee race.Once these initial realisations are made, the import of the book becomes clearer. The peculiar style (a kind of hallucinatory collage of National Geographic articles, encyclopaedia entries and users manuals), the strangely brutal combination of spurious objectivity and occasional shocking instances where the reader is addressed directly, or an entry is written in the first person, and the stuttering nature of the book stemming from its series of incredibly short bulletins, makes a kind of sense. Indeed, the reader becomes more able to appreciate the humour and pathos of the book's concerns. Its impact comes from the relationship between the aquired meanings of his words and the consequently alien landscape that they portray, and their conventional meanings which seem to denote some horrible family tragedy, possibly revolving around the narrator's brother, Jason Marcus. The main problem with the book in my view is that it seems to rely too heavily on this one dynamic; the tension between invented language and the conventional usage of words. For most of the course of the books length the reader's interest is sustained by the slow revelation of the the book's logic. However, even despite later attempts to vary the formula, the idea's seem overworked, and the format repetetive. This is not to say that the book does not have considerable value, and it is heartening to see that there are till writers prepared to push the envelope, and publishers willing to support them. Not a masterpiece then, but a fascinating American curiosity. I look forward to Marcus' next work with high hopes.
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