The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The Un-Disclosing God of Language

Overall an interesting premise but a very weak and amateurish development. There are just far to many issues to keep track of - Judaism, language, generational gaps, sociology, parenthood, pointless sex, science fiction and magical (sur)realism, among others - none of which are resolved satisfactorily. By the end, the author runs out of steam and seems to simply give up on the whole enterprise. Disappointing. Here’s one interpretation of a chaotic book:

What does a Jewish family do in adversity? It talks of course. Among its members. Then with other congregants at the synagogue. With the rabbi. They analyse the situation. They figure things out. They may even write to The Times or circulate a plan.

But when the adversity in question is language itself, what happens? If language causes mass illness, terminal illness, what can be done? And if it appears that one’s children, although immune from the illness, become the willing vectors for spreading it, what hope is there for the family itself?

Under such circumstances society cannot exist, at least not a society built on the premise of language - in law, in commercial activity, or as the basis of obligation of any sort. Memory and feeling tend to dissipate and eventually disappear. Such a society would require not just silence but the strict self-censoring of all thought so that it never reaches the level of speech or writing. In other words all of us would have to commit to a radical unknowing. As in the biblical prescriptions, the word would literally be “buried in the heart” so deeply that it could not be found much less expressed.

Recovery from the disease of language would, of course, be no mean accomplishment. Like any detoxification, it is a lonely, confusing, and painful process. Even more so since there is no possibility of communicating the experience to anyone else. Language is poison no matter what it might be used for. Even sign language can be lethal if not handled(!) properly. Authorities are obliged to act in such circumstances, procedures established, experiments run.

Sight of one written letter at a time - and even then only in fragments - might be permissible, for a sort of Cabalistic analysis of a script - potentially lethal as soon as it was whole enough to suggest comprehensibility. This technique allows writing/reading without the introduction of meaning by the writer/reader - an environment of controlled ignorance, as it were. A real composition/exegesis, therefore, without the danger of interpretive pollution either in the text or the writer/reader. This allows the search for an alternative alphabet without an inherent toxicity to proceed without unacceptable casualty levels.

Then again the business of script, not just the alphabet, is a tricky matter: “If we hid the text too much, it could not be seen. If we revealed it so it could be seen, it burned out the mind. No matter what. To see writing was to suffer.” Large numbers of test subjects did indeed suffer. Sometimes this led to “acoustical expiration. Suicide by language.” Unfortunate but merciful in the circumstances.

It turns out the the Book of Genesis had correctly diagnosed the human condition: “This was not a disease of language anymore, it was a disease of insight, understanding, knowing.” And to this there is a solution. Unfortunately it’s pharmacological not linguistic. Even more unfortunately it involves the bodily fluids of immune children. Bad news for one’s progeny.

And bad news even for the adult forebears. “We make the language in our own image and the language repulses us… We thought the world we lived in could be hacked into pleasing shapes simply by what we said.” says the protagonist, Samuel. His rabbi is even more critical:

“… language kills itself, expires inside its host. Language acts as an acid over its message. If you no longer care about an idea or feeling, then put it into language. That will certainly be the last of it, a fitting end. Language is another name for coffin.”

Ultimately, according Samuel, now a hermit, language leads to despair,: ”I found I could do without more things to misunderstand.”

View all my reviews