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MOVIE LOVE, REAL LOVE Exiled on a deserted island, a Christ-haunted journalist-turned-filmmaker attempts to persuade a married women from his past to help him produce a science fiction-themed pastiche to the 1960s French New Wave classic, Last Year at Marienbad. Through this act of artistic creation, he expects to carry out the will of God by prophesizing the death of time and the birth of a new religion. If only he can make the woman remember him.
Click here for free ebook - Marienbad My Love by Mark Leach By clicking on the link, you agree to only use the ebook offered here for your own personal reading. You further agree that you will not distribute it in any way, or place it at other sites, or share it with other readers. Copyright 2008, Mark Leach
|  Thrill-crazed space bugs on a mission from God! Marienbad My Love is a B-movie voyage of dark violence, of vines strangling the pulpit and moths consuming the flag – and an important discovery of why so many people who appear to be alive are really dead. Is the filmmaker’s unrequited love interest among them? Is he? Perhaps he will find the answer – but only if he can find a way out of his prison, a way off the forsaken island he calls Marienbad.
Like a Hollywood blockbuster about the end of the world, Marienbad My Love plays to our millennial fascination with divine vengeance and the conclusion of time. But instead of Christian doctrines concerning the Apocalypse, this story deals in the eschatology of the everyday and the world of film. Richly populated with cinematic illusions, Marienbad My Love is a celluloid sci-fi nightmare of UFOs, extraterrestrials, human/alien hybrids, alternate histories, secret government conspiracies and evil corporate cabals.
Ten Reasons to Read Marienbad My Love
1. A giant orbiting UFO – It is an incredible sight – a white clock dial is bleeding through the thin cobalt sky. The psychic contrail is suspended in the high, thin stratosphere, an icy cirrus cloud of time. Somehow I understand that the government knows all about it, but has been keeping it a secret. Now that the Clock in the Air has been "de-cloaked," there is no denying its existence. Is it an alien spaceship? Perhaps – or it could be something far more significant: A sign from the Deity.
2. Nazi/alien collaborations - I find myself inside the command module, a clinical, domed room off a metallic hallway, a sleek 1950s B-movie set consisting of a curved corridor of polished steel, assorted German signage – “Actung!” – in a decidedly Luftwaffe font.
3. Alien abductions - I rise from the table and glimpse my reflection in the polished metal walls. I appear exactly as before; the ordeal leaves no unseen marks or scars. And yet, something has changed. I view the future as contained in glowing drawers of human-insect hybrid fetuses.
4. Human/alien hybrids - We have just learned that the DNA of every human on the planet has been converted to that of an insect. We feel unchanged, but I comment to those around me that the outward transformation will begin soon. The new genetic code will transform us into new beings. And sure enough, I am right. The scene changes and I find myself standing over a comatose Allison. She is nude, covered in damp dirt. I am cleaning her with a sponge, revealing the beginning growth of an exoskeletal thorax. “We’ll all look like this soon,” I tell myself.
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5. Mind control - “These technologies can’t be repeated, prevented or even revealed using current market technologies. Onbeam systems have been infiltrated with covert backdoor access points, where the black ops agents use Fluoride9 to gain entrance to the brain’s unconscious processing centers. Those of us who are victims of this mind control have found our attempts to fight the conspiracy regularly thwarted by technology that can penetrate EM and acoustic shielding, move objects at a distance, pull legs out from under people at a distance, propel a moving car sideways, make objects disappear and reappear in a new location, apply enough force to a building that it will make snapping noises, especially at night as you are just falling asleep, make people burp or pass gas when they least expect it, usually in public places around a lot of people, cause consumer appliances to fail shortly after the expiration of the warranty and give people sunburns on cloudy days.”
6. Religious insects from outer space - The giant cicada stands on its back legs, revealing an exoskeletal underbelly of armored plates the tint of washed out gray. A whirring, rasping voice comes out of a vibrating membrane on its thorax. “First remove the log from your own eye, then you can help your neighbor remove the speck from his.” 7. A mad scientist – “He’s offering free water, but don’t drink any. It’s just a ruse to introduce a new version of Fluoride9 into the populace and create the world’s first privately-owned deity.”
8. An evil CEO - “Oh, Buckstop is totally insane. He is the quintessential narcissistic CEO. … Buckstop is using Summons Replisystems and Fluoride9 to take control of the onbeam infrastructure and stage a full blown corporate invasion of the collective unconscious. His goal is to rule the world.”
9. A time-traveling, green-skinned monster of the unconscious - A strange wind sings down into the concrete silo, filling my nostrils with the salt air of 1942 and the corroded metal stench of the U.S.S. Ethan Allen Hitchcock. I can hear the ozone gas hissing and crackling from the main reactor of the ship as the green-toned Fiend steps forward, exhaling crimson smoke and bits of sparking magnesium.
10. The end of the world - We shoot up into the sunlight like Lucifer blasted out of Hell. The alien sets me on my feet just in time to see the tornado tower collapse. It is a horror, a tangle of metal and anguished machinery cries. The turboprop detaches from its moorings and becomes airborne, flying into the neighboring pasture. Suddenly the ground rumbles. Buckstop’s missile is screaming into the sky on a surging pillar of fire. The stuttering roar of the rocket blast shakes the earth for miles around, flushing birds out of surrounding pastures and setting off nearby car alarms. A moment later there is a brilliant flash, a tremendous explosion just beyond the tree line. It is the dramatic volcanic eruption of my dream, another incredible revelation. Crimson fire rains down upon Strangers Rest. Rooftops are ablaze – including presumably my house. I picture its multi-gabled roof exploding in flames.
| 17 million words and counting! World’s longest novel keeps getting longer
Coppell, TX - Texas writer Mark Leach has published an expanded edition of "Marienbad My Love," the world's longest novel in English, that tops 17 million words and also sets new records for the world's longest word, sentence and book title.
The Coppell, Texas, writer has been making a run at the record books with his still-growing story of a Christ-haunted filmmaker who believes he is called on by God to bring about the end of the world by producing a science fiction-themed pastiche of the 1961 French New Wave classic, “Last Year at Marienbad.”
“If you’re going to destroy the world, you really ought to do it big,” Leach said. “When I released the first edition in March, the original length of 2.5 million words seemed about right for a 21st century Apocalypse. But the ideas kept coming, and the story kept growing. Now I feel like I'm just getting warmed up.”
“Marienbad My Love” is a massive work by almost any measure. It dwarfs Marcel Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time,” a 1.5-million-word opus that currently holds the “Guinness Book of Records” title as the longest novel in English. It is roughly twice as long as Henry Darger's “In the Realms of the Unreal,” an unpublished, 15,000-page fantasy manuscript that is believed to have a word count of nine million.
Also, “Marienbad My Love" is substantially longer than L. Ron Hubbard’s “Mission Earth,” which is widely regarded as the world’s longest science-fiction novel at 1.2 million words, and Madison Cooper’s 1.1-million-word “Sironia, Texas,” which made news in 1952 when TIME Magazine wrote that it was “apparently the longest novel by an American writer ever to be published.”
“I’ve always been rather enamored with the story of Madison Cooper,” Leach said. “He was a millionaire bachelor in Waco, where my mother was raised. I grew up hearing stories about how he spent 11 years writing his book in secret. He supposedly kept his notes on a paper window shade in the room where he did his writing. If someone unexpectedly entered the room, he’d quickly raise the shade to hide his work.”
Leach began working on “Marienbad My Love” about 20 years ago. The fictional town of Strangers Rest is largely based on circa 1988 Coppell and nearby Roanoke, one of several small communities in Northeast Tarrant County that Leach covered as a reporter at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
“I loved the mix of old and new," Leach said. "Back then Coppell was much smaller than it is today, but the development had already begun. It was much the same in Roanoke. The derelict rock saloon, the old bank on Oak Street - it was like a piece of living history."
By no means does Leach believe his record will stand unchallenged. He is hedging his bet by also challenging the records for:
* longest word. Also called "the holy Jah," the 4.4-million-letter noun is a coinage of words from the world's faiths and means "god within." * longest sentence (3 million words). * longest book title (6,700 words)..
Literary influences on "Marienbad My Love" Last Year at Mariebad (film script by Alain Robbe-Grillet) The Fall by Albert Camus Lancelot by Walker Percy The Nova Trilogy by William Burroughs Towards the End of Time by John Updike The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges Snow White by Donald Barthelme Indian Depredations in Texas by J.W. Wilbarger Sironia, Texas by Madison Cooper Love in the Ruins by Walker Percy Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. The prose poetry of Russell Edson Plays of Shakespeare Roman Mythology The Bible Flying Saucers by Carl Jung Archetype of the Apocalypse by Edward F. Edinger The Left Behind seriesFear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson Frankenstein by Mary Shelley Moby Dick by Herman Melville Farnham's Freehold by Robert A. Heinlein March of the Robots by Lionel Fanthrope * * * * * * * * * * * * Cinematic influences on "Marienbad My Love" Last Year at Marienbad Eraserhead Man Who Fell to Earth Teenagers from Outer Space Sisters Lathe of Heaven (1980 version) Five Million Years to Earth The Omega Man Solaris (1972 version) Dr. Strangelove La Belle Captive Rocky Horror Picture Show Plan 9 From Outer Space Eyes Wide Shut Ed Wood Blade Runner Soylent Green Logan's Run Beneath the Planet of the Apes Naked Lunch Carnival of Souls |
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