Ben Marcus is the author of four novels. His latest is The Flame Alphabet. He is also a professor at Columbia University and the editor of The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories. Flame warrior.
"Machineries of reason, machineries of conduct, machineries of virtue. The machine that regulates instinct, keeps one’s hands free of another man’s throat, free of one’s own. These machines have all, as someone said, gone too long in the elements. Gummed now, rusted, bloodless. I forget who said it and I no longer care."
- The Flame Alphabet
ARTICLES FEATURING BEN

Shape Made of Smoke: Ben Marcus’s “Notes from the Fog”
Katie Da Cunha Lewin reviews Ben Marcus's new short story collection....
Anti-Comprehension Pills
what may seem most revolutionary about Barthes’s essay is what it takes for granted: that there are readers at all for literary fiction...
