The Flame Alphabet
- novel as wild SF. That's SF as in speculative fiction, as in science
fiction, as in singularly freaky, as in supersonic futuristic.
On
the first page, the tale's narrator, a middle-aged husband and
father, a gent by the name of Sam, double-bolts his bedroom door, packs
up sound abatement fabrics, anti-comprehension pills, child's radio
retrofitted as toxicity screen and Dräger Aerotest breathing kit.
What's going on here? As we discover very quickly, mom and dad must
protect themselves against the toxic words coming out of
fourteen-year-old daughter Esther's mouth.
The Flame Alphabet
quakes and jives at the impossible intersection of Philip K. Dick (dry
humor, bizarre technologies, oddball twists), Cormac McCarthy (violent
post-apocalypse), Thomas M. Disch (diabolic experiments in
concentration camp), Thomas Ligotti (hyper weird horror) and Gary Lutz
(exactitude of language).
But fear not as there's good news for fans of straightforward, linear narrative: The Flame Alphabet
is a science fiction thriller from first page to last, a tale of
ghastly global catastrophe brought about when language spoken by
children suddenly becomes toxic for adults.
With its unifying plotline and articulate protagonist, The Flame Alphabet is much different than The Age of Wire and String,
an earlier work by the author that features narrator as slightly
confused recent arrival, an outsider cataloguing a remarkable stringy,
wiry age in his own personal, jumbled language.
However, there are several important points of overlap - a prime example: in the prelude (Argument) of Wire and String,
a philosopher by the name of Sernier demonstrates "the outer gaze
alters the inner thing, that by looking at an object we destroy it with
our desire, that for accurate vision to occur the thing must be trained
to see itself, or otherwise perish in blindness, flawed."
Our Flame Alphabet
narrator also references Sernier, this time as a philosopher of the
deadly crisis who vehemently objects to personal stories and anecdotes
replacing hard facts. And narrator Sam goes on to relate that according
to Sernier, "as soon as we litter our insights with pronouns, they
spoil. Ideas and people do not mix."
Thus, The Flame Alphabet
is a more detailed report, an insider's account, from the age of wire
and string. “This has led to a fatal toxicity.” - so proclaims the
outsider in his Wire and String catalogue. How fatal; how toxic? Family man Sam gives us nearly 300 pages of an alphabet aflame.
Since
we're talking intricately constructed thriller here, so as not to give
away too much, I'll make an immediate shift from arc of plot to eight Flame hot spots:
LANGUAGE
Following
formal announcement that the words of children are causing all the
sickness in adults, Sam studies Esther's handwriting: "Each piece of the
alphabet that she wrote looked like a fat molecule engorged on air,
ready to burst. How so very dear."
It's that 'how so very dear'
that lets us know Sam can still lace his personal tragedy with dry,
black humor, as dry and as black as burnt toast. Although Sam never
tells us his academic background or profession, it's obvious he's an
expert in language - among other linguistic talents, he can write a
Chinese script.
LOVING PARENTS
Major tension, especially in
the longer first part of the novel: Sam and wife Claire become
progressively sicker when in the presence of daughter Esther, yet, as
Esther's parents, the last thing they want is to be separated from her;
rather, Sam and Claire yearn to hug and support Esther in any way they
can.
Like Sam, Ben Marcus is both husband and father. In an
interview, he reflected: "There's that incredible loyalty you have as a
parent. And it's a loyalty that to me is almost biological, which allows
us to love our children unconditionally. I was interested in that
conflict — the cause of your sickness is there in your home, but it's
also the cause of your greatest love."
TO BE JEWISH
Sam and
his family are Forest Jews. In this America of wire and string, such
Jews possess a special, hidden hut out in the sticks. "The technology of
the hut was a glowbug setup. The hut covered the hole and the hole was
stuffed with wire. From our own hole came bright orange ropes of
cabling, the whole mess of it reeking of sewage, of something dead
beneath the earth." One of the kookier SF elements in the tale.
Ben
Marcus told an interviewer: "I did a lot of research into Christian and
Jewish mysticism, which is very much, in some sense, opposed to
language, or it sees religious experience as being above or beyond
language, Language can't reach that ineffable feeling we might have in a
religious sense. So I wanted to wonder what we'd be like if we couldn't
communicate with each other. Is it a desperately lonely experience, or
is there something possibly religious to it?"
I suspect many
readers will find this whole Jewish, Kabbalah mystical aspect of the
novel a chaotic tumble, alternating between fascinating and utterly wire
and string confusing.
PALMER ELDRITCH REDUX
As PKD had his
Palmer Eldrich, so Ben Marcus has his redheaded Murphy/LeBov. Paranoid,
power hungry, manipulative, cunning, calculating, sinister - Sam warns
us about this larger than life creep with a foreshadowing zinger: "In
the end our language is no match for what this man did."
INTERNAL LANGUAGE
Amid
all the sickness, disease and death, Sam recognizes the irony of spoken
and written language spreading mayhem since, ordinarily, it is the
unspoken words, our own internal dialogue, that poison our human, all
too human lives.
MARCUS SPARKLE
According to Gary Lutz, we
can tell if a writer is intent on creating sentences that are themselves
works of art by turning to any page of the writer's work and spotting
such sentences. Here's one from a chapter opening:
"Claire and I
traced our lethargy, the buzzing limbs and bodies that we dragged around
like sacks, to a trip to the ocean, where we succumbed to illconsidered
napping atop a crispy lattice of seaweed and sand gnats that left us
helplessly scratching ourselves for days."
Gary Lutz alludes to
an author's attention and use of stressed syllables, monosyllabic words,
alliteration, assonance and ending with the forceful punch of a word of
one-syllable - all qualities present here.
FAR OUT FLASH
Why,
oh why is this happening? Sam and others recognize the language fever
makes absolutely no logical sense. I find it curious that nobody either
in the novel or reviewing the novel has offered the suggestion (after
all, this is science fiction) that perhaps an alien invasion is under
way. In other words, more subtle than Jack Finny's Body Snatchers or
John Wyndham's Midwich Cuckoos, aliens have finally figured out how to
effectively eliminate adult Earthlings.
FLAME ALPHABET
And what is the flame alphabet of The Flame Alphabet? A clear, definitive answer is provided - but you'll have to read this extraordinary novel to find out.
American author Ben Marcus, born 1967
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