![]() ![]() My dad is a mathematician and his mentor in grad school was Norbert Weiner, who founded cybernetics. The metaphor of hacking, of interrupting a signal, is amazing. ![]() (The interview has been condensed, reorganized and edited for clarity.) ![]() caught up with Marcus for brunch near Columbia University, where he teaches writing, to discuss his new book, hacking and Jewish mysticism. And for all its surreal touches, it packs an emotional wallop – the pain of a man unable to communicate with his wife and daughter. Unlike his previous novels, The Flame Alphabet, published Tuesday, has a more conventional narrative format. It's another disturbing outing from Marcus, but one that might win a broader audience for the famously experimental author. Sam seeks guidance from his religion, a mystical form of Judaism in which rabbis communicate via a secret underground wiring system to their acolytes in special "listening sheds." Eventually, Sam must abandon his daughter and dying wife and attempt to create a new language. Before long, they realize that everyone around them is getting sick as well, that children's voices – and, eventually, any form of language – has become lethal. ![]() Every time their daughter speaks, Sam and Claire die a little: Their bodies waste away bit by bit, their faces shrink. Now, in his long-awaited follow-up novel, The Flame Alphabet, Marcus has taken the sickening potential of language to its darkest extreme: a speech-borne epidemic, in which words actually kill. ![]()
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