The Age of Wire and String
This is a handbook for surviving a strange new world, both like and unlike our own, one in which language has undergone a surreal revolution and words can no longer be trusted. Bold, brilliant and unique, THE AGE OF WIRE AND STRING is a classic of innovative fiction from a recognized master of the form, beautifully illustrated by Catrin Morgan.
Reviews
This novel has a place within the chaotic tradition of Sterne's Tristram Shandy. [If] novels are to reflect the complexities of the modern world, they must take on some of its messy characteristics... Intelligent and good-humoured.
Reading Ben Marcus ... challenges your expectations and takes you to a new level. Try it.
This rebirth of the book has rendered it even more compelling as a part guide, part textbook for a world that seems absurdist and dystopian and confusing.
I’m not going to say that this illustrated edition of Ben Marcus’s 1995 book THE AGE OF WIRE AND STRING is an improvement on the original text – I love it too much to want to risk insulting it… – but it’s certainly a most interesting version of it, or response to it.
I was engrossed from page one to the very end... THE AGE OF WIRE AND STRING works on so many levels that a new piece of this world will probably become apparent with every reread, even if you read it over a hundred times.
A brain rattling collection of experimental fictions ... There are shades of Beckett in the playful obsessive language twiddling, and although the text is 18 years old, THE AGE OF WIRE AND STRING still seems cutting edge.
Near-genius ... This will become a collectors' edition: love it.
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