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  TERMS

  AGE OF WIRE AND STRING, THE — Period in which English science devised abstract parlance system based on the flutter pattern of string and wire structures placed over the mouth during speech. Patriarchal systems and figures, including Michael Marcuses, were also constructed in this period—they are the only fathers to outlast their era.

  BEHAVIOR FARM — 1. Location of deep grass structures in which the seventeen primary actions, as prescribed by Thompson, designer of movement, are fueled, harnessed, or sparked by the seven partial viscous liquid emotions that pour in from the river. 2. Home of rest or retreat. Members at these sites seek the recreation of behavior swaps and dumps. Primary requirement of residence is the viewing of the Hampshire River films, which demonstrate the proper performance of all actions.

  FARM — The first place, places, or locations in which behavior was regulated and represented with liquids and grains. The sun shines upon it. Members move within high stalks of grass—cutting, threshing, sifting, speaking.

  FREDERICK — 1. Cloth, cloths, strips, or rags embedded with bumps of the braille variety. These Fredericks are billowy and often have buttons; they are donned in the morning and may be read at any time. When a member within a Frederick hugs, smothers, or mauls another member or person, he also transfers messages, in the form of bumps, onto the body that person is hiding. Certain braille codes are punched into the cloth for medicinal purposes: They ward off the wind, the man, the person, the girl. 2. To write, carve, embed, or engrave. We frederick with a tool, a stylus, our fingers.

  TOWER PERIOD, THE — Age of principal house inscriptions. Text was first discovered embedded in the house during this era. Shelters of the time were fitted with turrets and wires, poles, needled roofs, domes. Members were hired to recite the inscriptions of each house and holidays were formed to ritualize these performances, with food as a reward for orators who did not weep or otherwise distort the message carved into the house.

  FESTIVAL OF GARMENTS, THE — One-week celebration of fabrics and other wearables. The primary acts at the festival are the con struction of the cloth mountain, or tower; the climbing of the structure; and the plummets, dives, and descents that occur the remainder of the week. The winner is the member who manages to render the structure movable, controlling it from within, walking forward or leaning.

  GRASS-BRINGERS — Boys which are vessels for grass and sod. They move mainly along rivers, distributing their product north toward houses and other emptiness.

  DRAFTING THE PRELIFE — After different forms of alternatives, the phase in the living process when we formally begin to produce ourselves from the house and, in some cases, the automobile. Cornerings often begin with premature attempts to draft, to start to leave these areas before we have any useful notion of what we will do and where it may be safe enough to do it. The focus in this stage is on developing the tentative plan we found in our mind during the confinement, on completeness and contact rather than on carrying out the hurtful idea that seems most vital. Many from the house and the car will argue that their life does not begin until they have dismissed their most original idea, to draft instead a first plan of infliction, which is best carried out at some distance from the shelter and the vehicle.

  GREAT HIDING PERIOD, THE — Period of collective underdwelling practiced by the society. It occurred during the extreme engine phase, when the sun emitted a frequency that disrupted most shelters. While some members remained topside, their skin became hard, their ears blackened, and their hands grew useless. When the rest of the society emerged after the sun’s noise subsided, those who had remained could not discern forms, folded in agony when touched, and stayed mainly submerged to the eyes in water.

  DAY OF MOMENTS — Day, days, or weeks in which select and important moments of the society are repeated to perfection before resuming. Members alternate performing and watching, until there is no difference.

  MESSONISM — Religious system of the society consisting of the following principles: (1) Wonderment or devotion for any site in which houses preceded the arrival of persons. (2) The practice of sacrificing houses in autumn. It is an offering to Perkins, or the Thompson that controls it. (3) Any projection of a film or strips of colored plastic that generates images of houses upon a society. (4) The practice of abstaining from any act or locution that might indicate that one knows, knew, or has known any final detail or attribute of the pure Thompson. (5) Silence in the presence of weather. (6) The collection and consumption of string, which might be considered residue from the first form. The devout member acquires a private, internal pocket for this object. He allows it full navigational rule of his motions and standing poses. (7) The notion that no text shall fix the principles. All messages and imperatives, such as they are, shall be drawn from a private translation of the sun’s tones. The member shall design his house so that it shall mitten these syllables that ripple forth from the bright orb. He may place his faith in the walls, which it is his duty to shine, that they receive the vivid law within them and transfer it silently upon every blessed member who sits and waits inside the home.

  PALMER — System or city which is shiftable. A Palmer can be erected anywhere between the coasts.

  NESTOR’S RAPE FARM — 1. Any site of violation. 2. Initial farm run by G. D. Nestor in which the fourteen primary dogs of Dakota systematically raped the Charles family in August. 3. Place in which the Nestor group instructed members in molestation, the dive, stabbing, breaking the skin.

  SMELL CAMERA, THE — Device for capturing and storing odor. It is a wooden box augmented with string and two wire bunces. It houses odor for one season. It releases the odor when the shutter is snapped or jerked out. Afterward, the string must be combed and shaken.

  SCHENK — A school.

  HALF-MAN DAY — Holiday of diminution, or the Festival of Unresolved Actions. Only the largest members may participate. They swing sticks, there is running, and many swim great distances with wires on their backs. On the third day, a great fight occurs. After the feast, they are covered in grass while they sleep. They collaborate on a dream of the house, with each participant imagining perfectly his own room. Upon waking, they set to building it, rendering always a softer, less perfect form than the one in which they secretly lived the previous evening.

  SUBFEET WALKING RITUALS — Series of motion exercises conducted with hidden, buried, or severed leg systems. It was first named when members were required to move through tracts of high sand. The act was later repeated when the sand had faded. It is the only holiday in which motion is celebrated. Revelers honor the day by stumbling, dragging forward on their arms, binding their legs with wire, lying down and whispering, not being able to get up.

  THONG, THE — Leatherized ladle, spoon, or stick affixed often to the tongue of a member. It is considered the last item of the body. After demise, it may be treated with water to discern the final words of a person.

  TUNIC, THE — 1. Textile web, shared, at one time or another, by all members of a society. It is the only public garment. Never may it be cast off, altered, shrunk, or locally cleaned. Its upkeep is maintained under regulation of the Universal Storm Calendar, which deploys winds into its surface to loosen debris and members or persons that have exceeded their rightful term of inhabitation. 2. Garment placed between preage boy and girl members to enlarge or temporarily swell the genitals and shank during weather birthing.

  HAND WORDS — Patterns on the hand that serve as emblems or signals. They were developed during the silent wars of ten and three. The mitten is designed with palm holes so that members may communicate in the cold.

  WIRE, THE — The only element that is attached, affixed, or otherwise in contact with every other element, object, item, person, or member of the society. It is gray and often golden and glimmers in the morning. Members polish it simply by moving forward or backward or resting in place. The wire is the shortest distance between two bodies. It may be followed to any area or person one desires. It contains on its sur
face the shredded residue of hands—from members that pulled too hard, held on too long, got there too fast.

  THE AUTHOR

  Ben Marcus was born in Chicago in 1967. The son of a mathematician and a literary scholar, he was raised in the Midwest, Austin, London, Aarhus, and New York. He holds degrees from New York University and Brown University, and is on the faculty at Columbia University in New York. His writing has been published in Granta, the New Yorker, Harper’s, the Paris Review, and the New York Times. In addition to The Age of Wire and String, he is also the author of Notable American Women and The Flame Alphabet.

  THE ILLUSTRATOR

  Catrin Morgan studied illustration at The Royal College of Art. Since graduating she has exhibited her work internationally and is one of the author illustrators of Phantom Settlements. She teaches on the MA Illustration Authorial Practice at Falmouth University and BA Illustration at Norwich University of the Arts.

  Copyright

  Granta Publications, 12 Addison Avenue, London W11 4QR

  This illustrated edition first published in Great Britain by Granta Books 2013

  Text first published in the United States in 1995 by Knopf

  Copyright © 1995 by Ben Marcus

  Illustrations copyright © 2013 by Catrin Morgan

  Ben Marcus has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  All rights reserved. This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publisher, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  A CIP catalogue record for this ebook is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 1 84708 639 6