Everything is Constantly Changing
"Some of my favorite stories have already been told in The Metamorphoses. I see it as this kind of book that has swallowed all of literature.
It's a thriller. It's a mystery. It's a romance. It seems to have every story inside of it...
In a way, I feel like it always shows me what a good story is. And the clue is in the title, Metamorphoses, because that means change.
When you read it you realize that everything is constantly changing, and that that is, at least often, the key to a great story...
So when I read it, what instructs me is that need to kind of keep upsetting what you have—upending it. And the book is a kind of clinic on that. It just shows you how stories are made even while telling great stories"
Ovid, ., & Raeburn, D. A. (2004). Metamorphoses: A new verse translation. London: Penguin. (publisher, library)
"An Interview with Fiction Writer Ben Marcus," by Kevin Larimer, Poets & Writers, August 16, 2004
"The Grow-Light Blues," a short story by Ben Marcus, published in The New Yorker on June 8, 2015.