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3.12 AVERAGE
3.12 AVERAGE
Leaving the Sea is a collection of short stories by Ben Marcus, author of The Flame Alphabet. I didn’t get to read this novel, but it sounded right up my alley, and I was eager to read his stories. What I found wasn’t quite to my taste, but I was thoroughly impressed by Marcus’ power of imagination.
Some of these stories take place in a world recognizable as our own, but as you move through the collection, the stories become progressively stranger. These stories lead to a few dystopian-seeming pieces, and then to full-on dreamscapes.
These dreamscapes place the reader in a totally foreign, possibly post-apocalyptic, world, where people disguise themselves in costumes, fabric has a language, and writing has protective powers. They are fully surreal, and although I struggled to understand the surroundings Marcus describes in a language that’s almost unrecognizable, I was blown away by Marcus’ ability to create such vivid, strange worlds.
Despite the broad range of this collections, all of the stories have in common a sense of melancholy and an almost frightening level of introspection. Regardless of the setting, realistic or surreal, these stories are highly internal, featuring intensely overanalytical characters.
I usually enjoy books that skew on the strange side, but I had trouble with this one. Although the realistic stories at the beginning of the collection were easy to read and understand, I felt troubled by the characters. But maybe it’s a credit to Marcus’ writing ability that I felt so troubled? I was impressed by Marcus’ imagination in the later surreal stories, but I couldn’t get my head around them. Perhaps they were a tad too experimental for my comfort zone.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.
See the full review at Books Speak Volumes.
Some of these stories take place in a world recognizable as our own, but as you move through the collection, the stories become progressively stranger. These stories lead to a few dystopian-seeming pieces, and then to full-on dreamscapes.
These dreamscapes place the reader in a totally foreign, possibly post-apocalyptic, world, where people disguise themselves in costumes, fabric has a language, and writing has protective powers. They are fully surreal, and although I struggled to understand the surroundings Marcus describes in a language that’s almost unrecognizable, I was blown away by Marcus’ ability to create such vivid, strange worlds.
Despite the broad range of this collections, all of the stories have in common a sense of melancholy and an almost frightening level of introspection. Regardless of the setting, realistic or surreal, these stories are highly internal, featuring intensely overanalytical characters.
I usually enjoy books that skew on the strange side, but I had trouble with this one. Although the realistic stories at the beginning of the collection were easy to read and understand, I felt troubled by the characters. But maybe it’s a credit to Marcus’ writing ability that I felt so troubled? I was impressed by Marcus’ imagination in the later surreal stories, but I couldn’t get my head around them. Perhaps they were a tad too experimental for my comfort zone.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.
See the full review at Books Speak Volumes.
In these unfortunate stories, the author alternates between dystopian gibberish and increasingly baroque variations on self-loathing. Although there are many passages of very clever and colorful writing, the overall impact was so unpleasant as to make for a nasty reading experience. Not recommended.
Fatherhood has somehow become about helping the boy not love his mother too painfully.
It is often said that it is the ones we love that we hurt—or hurt us—the most. In a collection of short stories that seems proper to place on your bookshelves between [a:George Saunders|8885|George Saunders|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1355356844p2/8885.jpg] and [a:David Foster Wallace|4339|David Foster Wallace|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1381115424p2/4339.jpg]¹, Ben Marcus’ Leaving the Sea Stories explores this harsh sentiment across a wide range of narrative devices that build with a growing dread and sense of alienation. Marcus deftly employs defamiliarization in his prose, building a nightmare of a reality that seems so detached and foreign while also immediate and familiar. Marcus’ dark humor takes aim at human relationships, particularly the family structure and family destruction, and takes wing with soaring satire.There is much experimentation, and while not all of them fire with majesty, the overall effort and effect is more than deserving of applause. As the collection progresses, Marcus pushes boundaries further and further, experimenting with style and narrative as the horrors of everyday life and human nature come alive through these discomforting and disquieting emotionally-introspective tales of family and survival in a world apathetic towards us.
A self needed to spill out sometimes, a body should show evidence of what the hell went on inside it.
Experimentation in literature is something that should be encouraged and I always enjoy watching an author toy with language and literary devices to tell a story in fresh, new ways. Inevitably, not all experiments prove a success—such is the nature of experimentation—yet it is often through failure that we see the pathways towards success. This is evident in Leaving the Sea as Marcus moves from traditional narratives in the earlier stories (though this is not a flaw of those stories, which ooze with the dread and discomfort across their grim satirization) towards more playful styles and approaches in the second half of the book. Of particular note is section 2 which consists of two stories told through a series of Q&A’s set in a dystopian future (imagine the Somni section of [b:Cloud Atlas|49628|Cloud Atlas|David Mitchell|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1406383769s/49628.jpg|1871423] featuring a sharp-tongued, sociopathic revolutionary). The later stories have significant breaks from the traditional style that helps to elevate the expression of obfuscation in a modern society where boundaries are difficult to ascertain. Several of the more experimental works, while exciting in their approach, tend to be more a chore to read. The title story, a mere five pages in length, feels nearly too long by half. Told through one run of sentence (until the final paragraph which then has a potent staccato burst of emotional sentences to pierce the heart) consisting of a list of the narrator's actions and life memories that build an image of him as a person through a wonderful, abstract vantage point, the charm of the style wears thin quickly and has a loquacity that induces lethargy in the reader. Additionally, some of the more futuristic stories spend more time creating a haunting and detached future complete with unfamiliar linguistic rules than actually examining the story at hand and come off feeling cumbersome and uneven. However, these experimental frailties do not hinder or plague the collection and their bold inventiveness and creativity are still awe-inspiring. I would be interested to see which stories worked best for other people, as I feel many of the ones I disliked (a few I strongly disliked) could be the favorites of others who may dislike the ones I most enjoyed. A particularly extraordinary success is the Watching Mysteries With my Mother which is a virtually plotless thought experiment as the narrator considers the statistics of his opening statement ‘I don’t think my mother will die today’, guilted by the notion that one’s likelihood of death increases when alone so therefor each time he leaves her home he is putting her more at risk, compounded exponentially with each passing day as her aging also increases her statistical probability, as well as a droll investigation into the plots of BBC mystery films.
When children are yelled at by father, their skin tightens into a grimace over their faces because their bones have grown swollen with his voice.²
Marcus’ satire is sharp as is his wit. Most of these stories feature weak male figures, typically overweight and middle aged, under the thumb of obdurate women and society. Their emotions are suppressed and compressed to the point of near explosion. While the general sense of character doesn’t vary much, Marcus manages to keep a fresh voice though each story, some of them gifted with supreme prose and others more banal having to state that it would ‘take a poet’ to properly express their points. These stories hone in on the faults in the family structure where human closeness seems a vile plague and each person ‘an allergy to himself.’ Fathers are especially targeted for the hurt they can bestow upon their children for their cruelty or inability to wear the role with grace, and wives (current and ex-) are typically cold brick walls to break the heart and soul against in every conversation. We are the children tossed amongst the waves of family failures, and Marcus’ style helps simulate the bewilderment, helplessness and emotional pains of this situation. Much is left unsaid, or just beyond our grasp, like dark truths whose emotional weight is too great for the frailties of language.
While this collection is dark, it is not without its uproarious humor. Particularly I Can Say Nice Things which takes the social satire to literature and the classroom. We follow the disillusioned writing professor as he oversees a creative writing class on board a cruise ship, which makes for an incisive metaphor for the creation of literature (the narrator remarks humorously that sea metaphors work on land but, ironically, out at sea seem terrible). The students are fantastic caricatures of college literary-minded writers and critics, often seen attacking and dismissing the works of others while writing stories themselves that are strangely not at all dissimilar.
While the collection has an uneven feel and several of the stories don’t quite take wing into the heart, Marcus has created a wonderful array of devices and tales that penetrate deep into the human soul. These stories feature characters alienated and emotionally stymied in a world that seems alien to us, but under close inspection after sifting through the gleeful defamiliarization techniques, we find these settings are closer to home that originally thought. This collection is sometimes suffocatingly dark, but the humor is spread well to break the clouds and no matter what the reader is always sure to feel the rays of a bright and bold voice shining down on them.
3.5/5
If I was assigned a death role...you might still hear me disputing the reigning survival narratives, perhaps even arguing that death is the most radical form of survival. It is a necessary imperfection of the species that we each believe we are in the right.
¹The comparison to these authors feels both a justifiable and lazy assessment While Marcus does retain the self-conscious playfulness of Wallace and the eerie mid-life, mid-depression dystopian dramas of Saunders, it is a style—or better, styles&mash;that reverberate in a highly original voice. There is a refined charm that lurks in each story that is distinctly his and the comparisons are meant as complementary instead of shoehorning him into that realm of surrealistic MFA (I suspect the ‘this is too MFA-ey’ remarks will surface in aggressive dismissal of the collection and author) that seems to be an artifact of the modern era of literature. There are times to when a comparison with [a:Don DeLillo|233|Don DeLillo|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1401807364p2/233.jpg] also seems adequate, though more in ideas than style, and the bold experimental willingness recalls the spirit of the great [a:Donald Barthelme|24425|Donald Barthelme|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1387553207p2/24425.jpg].
² Much like in his [b:The Flame Alphabet|11325011|The Flame Alphabet|Ben Marcus|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1333576480s/11325011.jpg|16253260], people are toxic to one another, especially their speech.
It is often said that it is the ones we love that we hurt—or hurt us—the most. In a collection of short stories that seems proper to place on your bookshelves between [a:George Saunders|8885|George Saunders|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1355356844p2/8885.jpg] and [a:David Foster Wallace|4339|David Foster Wallace|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1381115424p2/4339.jpg]¹, Ben Marcus’ Leaving the Sea Stories explores this harsh sentiment across a wide range of narrative devices that build with a growing dread and sense of alienation. Marcus deftly employs defamiliarization in his prose, building a nightmare of a reality that seems so detached and foreign while also immediate and familiar. Marcus’ dark humor takes aim at human relationships, particularly the family structure and family destruction, and takes wing with soaring satire.There is much experimentation, and while not all of them fire with majesty, the overall effort and effect is more than deserving of applause. As the collection progresses, Marcus pushes boundaries further and further, experimenting with style and narrative as the horrors of everyday life and human nature come alive through these discomforting and disquieting emotionally-introspective tales of family and survival in a world apathetic towards us.
A self needed to spill out sometimes, a body should show evidence of what the hell went on inside it.
Experimentation in literature is something that should be encouraged and I always enjoy watching an author toy with language and literary devices to tell a story in fresh, new ways. Inevitably, not all experiments prove a success—such is the nature of experimentation—yet it is often through failure that we see the pathways towards success. This is evident in Leaving the Sea as Marcus moves from traditional narratives in the earlier stories (though this is not a flaw of those stories, which ooze with the dread and discomfort across their grim satirization) towards more playful styles and approaches in the second half of the book. Of particular note is section 2 which consists of two stories told through a series of Q&A’s set in a dystopian future (imagine the Somni section of [b:Cloud Atlas|49628|Cloud Atlas|David Mitchell|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1406383769s/49628.jpg|1871423] featuring a sharp-tongued, sociopathic revolutionary). The later stories have significant breaks from the traditional style that helps to elevate the expression of obfuscation in a modern society where boundaries are difficult to ascertain. Several of the more experimental works, while exciting in their approach, tend to be more a chore to read. The title story, a mere five pages in length, feels nearly too long by half. Told through one run of sentence (until the final paragraph which then has a potent staccato burst of emotional sentences to pierce the heart) consisting of a list of the narrator's actions and life memories that build an image of him as a person through a wonderful, abstract vantage point, the charm of the style wears thin quickly and has a loquacity that induces lethargy in the reader. Additionally, some of the more futuristic stories spend more time creating a haunting and detached future complete with unfamiliar linguistic rules than actually examining the story at hand and come off feeling cumbersome and uneven. However, these experimental frailties do not hinder or plague the collection and their bold inventiveness and creativity are still awe-inspiring. I would be interested to see which stories worked best for other people, as I feel many of the ones I disliked (a few I strongly disliked) could be the favorites of others who may dislike the ones I most enjoyed. A particularly extraordinary success is the Watching Mysteries With my Mother which is a virtually plotless thought experiment as the narrator considers the statistics of his opening statement ‘I don’t think my mother will die today’, guilted by the notion that one’s likelihood of death increases when alone so therefor each time he leaves her home he is putting her more at risk, compounded exponentially with each passing day as her aging also increases her statistical probability, as well as a droll investigation into the plots of BBC mystery films.
When children are yelled at by father, their skin tightens into a grimace over their faces because their bones have grown swollen with his voice.²
Marcus’ satire is sharp as is his wit. Most of these stories feature weak male figures, typically overweight and middle aged, under the thumb of obdurate women and society. Their emotions are suppressed and compressed to the point of near explosion. While the general sense of character doesn’t vary much, Marcus manages to keep a fresh voice though each story, some of them gifted with supreme prose and others more banal having to state that it would ‘take a poet’ to properly express their points. These stories hone in on the faults in the family structure where human closeness seems a vile plague and each person ‘an allergy to himself.’ Fathers are especially targeted for the hurt they can bestow upon their children for their cruelty or inability to wear the role with grace, and wives (current and ex-) are typically cold brick walls to break the heart and soul against in every conversation. We are the children tossed amongst the waves of family failures, and Marcus’ style helps simulate the bewilderment, helplessness and emotional pains of this situation. Much is left unsaid, or just beyond our grasp, like dark truths whose emotional weight is too great for the frailties of language.
While this collection is dark, it is not without its uproarious humor. Particularly I Can Say Nice Things which takes the social satire to literature and the classroom. We follow the disillusioned writing professor as he oversees a creative writing class on board a cruise ship, which makes for an incisive metaphor for the creation of literature (the narrator remarks humorously that sea metaphors work on land but, ironically, out at sea seem terrible). The students are fantastic caricatures of college literary-minded writers and critics, often seen attacking and dismissing the works of others while writing stories themselves that are strangely not at all dissimilar.
While the collection has an uneven feel and several of the stories don’t quite take wing into the heart, Marcus has created a wonderful array of devices and tales that penetrate deep into the human soul. These stories feature characters alienated and emotionally stymied in a world that seems alien to us, but under close inspection after sifting through the gleeful defamiliarization techniques, we find these settings are closer to home that originally thought. This collection is sometimes suffocatingly dark, but the humor is spread well to break the clouds and no matter what the reader is always sure to feel the rays of a bright and bold voice shining down on them.
3.5/5
If I was assigned a death role...you might still hear me disputing the reigning survival narratives, perhaps even arguing that death is the most radical form of survival. It is a necessary imperfection of the species that we each believe we are in the right.
¹The comparison to these authors feels both a justifiable and lazy assessment While Marcus does retain the self-conscious playfulness of Wallace and the eerie mid-life, mid-depression dystopian dramas of Saunders, it is a style—or better, styles&mash;that reverberate in a highly original voice. There is a refined charm that lurks in each story that is distinctly his and the comparisons are meant as complementary instead of shoehorning him into that realm of surrealistic MFA (I suspect the ‘this is too MFA-ey’ remarks will surface in aggressive dismissal of the collection and author) that seems to be an artifact of the modern era of literature. There are times to when a comparison with [a:Don DeLillo|233|Don DeLillo|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1401807364p2/233.jpg] also seems adequate, though more in ideas than style, and the bold experimental willingness recalls the spirit of the great [a:Donald Barthelme|24425|Donald Barthelme|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1387553207p2/24425.jpg].
² Much like in his [b:The Flame Alphabet|11325011|The Flame Alphabet|Ben Marcus|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1333576480s/11325011.jpg|16253260], people are toxic to one another, especially their speech.
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Kind of a snoozefest. Sorry ben marcus. Something of the immature philosophy student in here. It's been a while since I gave up on it, and I would like to continue to slog through the whole thing eventually... But can't recommend it in good consciousness.
The writing is very good, but this is still a book I'd only recommend to people who find white guys with first world problems super compelling. Some seriously weird attitudes to women on display here which was off-putting, mostly because of the frequency they appeared throughout the different stories.
Woah. A tactful editor should have divided this book in two halves. The first is a collection of stories that break the heart; little dramas of daily life, childcare, unemployment and other difficulties. So convincing are these stories they are difficult to read as the author conveys characters we can readily identify with.
But then...
Things get weird. Suddenly out of nowhere stories become proto-scif-fi, they become nonsensical playing with form, understanding, comprehension and stretching the possibilities and limits of narrative. Synaesthetic meandering thoughts spin in and out of each other and loop in rhythm until, nah screw it, it's too hard and gives too little back.
I had read some Ben Marcus before and hoped for better. The first half destroyed me, the second was destroyed before it got to me.
But then...
Things get weird. Suddenly out of nowhere stories become proto-scif-fi, they become nonsensical playing with form, understanding, comprehension and stretching the possibilities and limits of narrative. Synaesthetic meandering thoughts spin in and out of each other and loop in rhythm until, nah screw it, it's too hard and gives too little back.
I had read some Ben Marcus before and hoped for better. The first half destroyed me, the second was destroyed before it got to me.
dark
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Pretty great language, but throughout the book, the stories become increasingly absurd and tedious.
Content Warnings
Minor: Cursing, Infidelity, Suicidal thoughts, Death of parent