Ben Marcus has a new short story in Harper’s Magazine, although the web site doesn’t even have January 2008 up yet. Because of the story’s placement in Harper’s, I couldn’t help but reading it in light of the fracas between Marcus and Jonathan Franzen that appeared in the same pages. It’s funny to remember, in the light of the whole spectrum of fiction, how similarly the two write – that is, they both belong to the phylum of literary fiction, albeit perhaps at different ends – and thus how petty the squabble might have appeared. Not that the debate shouldn’t have occurred: yes, we should discuss the different position directions of fiction, weighing between pushing fiction into new categories versus shoring up a broad fan-base by means of accessibility. But it’s a bit like paring the theological distinctions between amillenialism and pre-millenialism: yes, distinctly different eschatological positions, yet when it comes down to it, both share shockingly similar cosmologies.
I’m rethinking the debate after reading Marcus’ short story “A Failure of Concern.” Sorry Marcus, but despite all the talk about things burning “new synaptical pathways,” and whatnot, there’s not much new here. And I say that having read and liked the story. It’s just that despite some fancy footwork with the structure of the sentences and plot, to offer a detective story that ends in the reversal of cause and effect isn’t exactly ground-breaking. Umberto Eco did it in Foucault’s Pendulum two decades ago. And most of the sentence-level innovations are simply a matter of style, of personal affection, the kind of uniqueness that every talented new fiction writer brings to fiction.
Of course, I’m aware that Harper’s might not have wanted to print Marcus’ more eccentric offerings. Granted. And that he clearly has more experimental fiction that this particular story. I’m just reminded of something that N+1 said a couple of weeks ago, at a reading given at USC. They were inveighing against Jonathan Safran Foer, pointing out that the method of storytelling in Everything is Illuminated was hardly as innovative as critics claimed it to be. Of course they were right – they named a number of artists (I remember John Barth) that were offering far more experimental pieces back in the 60s. So JSF wasn’t groundbreaking, per se, he merely told an interesting story in a fascinating way. That leads me back to the feeling of irony I get when reading a Ben Marcus story and thinking: hmmm, great story, but not exactly pushing the limits of fiction. Which, for me, is okay. I don’t always be needing to be reading stories that skate the liminal edges of my understanding. Marcus, from what’s he’s claimed, seems to extract some primal joy from it. I suppose I’ll take my joy from a wider spectrum of sources, some of them more accessible than Franzen, and some of them more difficult than Marcus.
