![]() ![]() Things open with a hilarious monologue by the father of “Ben Marcus, the improbable author of this book”: a father who is buried deep in the backyard of the family house somewhere in Ohio and who, after alluding to “the Silent Mothers,” urges readers to “forget Ben Marcus and his world of lies.” The Silent Mothers seem to be the women, led by Jane Dark, who have taken over the culture in Marcus’s futuristic America, devoting themselves to language purification-maybe elimination-and to the de-emotionalizing of people, not least poor young and strange Ben Marcus, who suffers under and through many of their techniques. The verbal wizardry is still there, but the content has grown coquettish and slightened, no longer an engine sufficient to drive the whole. ![]() Marcus follows up his extraordinary The Age of Wire and String (1995) with something of a disappointment. ![]()
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