An interview with Ben Marcus

Ben Marcus has been called a genius by his fellow writers. An associate professor of creative writing at Columbia University, Marcus has published two critically acclaimed works of fiction: the novel Notable American Women and the collection of short stories The Age of Wire and String. Most recently he has edited The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, which contains stories from such authors as David Foster Wallace, A.M. Homes, and Brian Evenson, among others. Recently, Generation had the chance to sit down with Mr. Marcus and talk to him about the state of fiction today and other topics, just in time for his reading tonight at Hallwalls at 7 p.m., as part of the Exhibit X Reading Series.

Generation: The recent incoming classes at the University at Buffalo have been dubbed the MTV Classes, because MTV filmed their series Fraternity Life on our campus in 2002 and our enrollment subsequently increased.  What would you suggest to these students, who are often influenced more by television than the novel, to get them interested in reading fiction once again?

Ben Marcus: I can’t imagine that any group of students would be happy to be co-opted by a mega-corporation, and named after one.  These designations don’t say much to me.  Are we the Apple generation if we use an iPod, or the Sony generation if we watch that brand of TV?  Beneath these slogans and labels are real people, and real people still wonder why we’re here, how we’re supposed to live, and what will happen when we die.  That’s what fiction is for, to enter a space where what’s important, scary, and true can be made immediate, vivid, and even entertaining.

G: Author Raymond Federman recently visited UB, and remarked to students that the traditional short story is a dying form, and if not dead, then terminally ill. You have recently edited The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories: what do you feel the status of the short story is for fiction writers and their readers today?

BM: It’s hard to take death pronouncements very seriously, particularly when more people are reading and writing short stories than ever before.  As to the traditional short story, there are so many traditions, from realist to experimental, that it’s hard to know just which tradition Federman thinks might be dead.  But just because one’s own imagination might have failed to solve a perceived limit to an art form, does not mean that that art form is dead.  I’m still surprised, turned inside out, and smacked off the roof by short stories.  My experience is that students read and write the short story, and see it as a vital form for exploring the limits of story and language.  Storytelling is hugely important, and has always been a part of human endeavor.  It’s up to young writers to show us what stories are now, and how they might keep mattering.

G: In your introduction to The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, you remark that “A writer has to believe, and prove, that there are, if not new stories, then new ways of telling old ones.”   What would you then suggest to young writers who seem to merely emulate their favorite writers? How can they both find their own voice and be original?

BM: Originality is something that is hard to consciously strive for, because it is a sort of mirage, and the more we read of the past, the more we discover that even famously original projects have their sources and debts to tradition.  And we are bound to be influenced by all kinds of voices.  It’s perfectly natural.  But it’s also important to strive to put our mark on things, to report on the world as we feel it and see it, and to do so with our own language.

G: In your novel Notable American Women—a fairly dark book about a religious cult—your main “fictional” characters seem to be named after your own “real” family, pushing your readers’ familiar expectations about traditional distinctions between reality and the imagination. Can you remark on why this interests you—and, finally, what your family thought about “appearing” in your book?

BM: The scenario of the book was so clearly unreal that I thought it would be interesting to decorate it with the biographical gestures of using the names of my own family members.  Sometimes we write stories about ourselves and change all of the names.  Here I wrote one that I had entirely invented, but kept all the names in there to make it seem more real.  My family has been pretty good about being co-opted by the book.  The characters are so different from them that I don’t think there was much chance for confusion.

G: As an extension of your novel Notable American Women, you’ve created a web-site that offers an added dimension to the novel. Why did you turn to an alternate media like the web to expand your fiction?

BM: A web site was just another way to ratify the world of the novel, to make it seem more real.  It seemed like a natural extension to me, a kind of corporate presence for the demented world of the book.

G: What do you, Ben Marcus, author and professor, like to read? What fiction is on your night table right now?

BM: I’m reading two collections of short fiction: Men and Cartoons, By Jonathan Lethem, and Nice Big American Baby, by Judy Budnitz.

G: What projects do you have underway right now?

BM: I’m working on a novel right now, and a couple of shorter projects, including the catalogue text for a show on painting that will be at the Whitney, in New York, next summer.