Media Coverage

The Space of Megatexts: “Reading” Mark Leach’s Marienbad My Love
At over seventeen million words and consisting of seventeen volumes printed in dense eight-point font, the second edition of Mark Leach’s Marienbad My Love (2008; 2nd ed., 2013) currently holds the record as the world’s longest novel and is what I have elsewhere called a megatext. Composed over the course of thirty years using a number of digital techniques, the result is one of the more spatially imposing works of literature to ever sit on a shelf. Because of this, it also appears that no one has really bothered to read it. Whether this is due to some prejudice against self-publication or critics’ perceptions of authorial vanity, the sheer unreadable size of the text has discouraged anyone from taking Leach’s work all that seriously. I believe this is a mistake and this paper aims to seriously consider a remarkable project that rebelliously pushes against the conceptual, temporal, and physical boundaries of the codex novel. The revisions made to the second edition of the text indicate that not only does Leach intend for people to actually read his book, but also that Marienbad My Love is in fact a complex theoretical statement about the novel in the digital age and a meditation on the present and future of literary writing. In this paper, I will argue that accounting for Marienbad My Love’s material size by finding ways to speculatively (and actually) read this unreadable text will encourage us to rethink how we theorize the novel in the twenty-first century.
https://bradleyjfest.com/tag/marienbad-my-love/

What—and How Much—Belongs in Your Novel?
"... Marienbad My Love is an “open source” novel created by a conceptual artist and which leans heavily on found texts. It’s a desert island story in which a filmmaker “attempts to persuade a married women (sic) from his past to help him produce a science fiction-themed pastiche to the 1960s French New Wave classic, Last Year at Marienbad.” It includes a UFO, Nazi/alien collaborations, mind control, a Cthulu-worthy green monster and the end of the world. ..."
https://writerunboxed.com/2020/09/02/what-and-how-much-belongs-in-your-novel/#_ftn1

CUTTING UP TWO BURROUGHS
Cutting Up Two Burroughs by Mark Leach fulfills a fantasy imagined by Darren Wershler in
The
Tapeworm Foundry:“andor proceed as though edgar rice burroughs not william s
burroughs is the author of naked lunch.” Leach has applied the “cut-up”
technique (used by William S. Burroughs) in order to interfuse the stories of
jungles (featuring the character of Tarzan) with the stories of junkies
(featuring the character of Benway), thereby producing a hybrid result, whose
lysergic rambling almost implies that poetry itself represents a kind of robotic
writing, generated from an “ape-man” on drugs. – excerpt
from “More Otherness from Conceptual Literature” by Christian Bök
at
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2012/04/more-otherness-from-conceptual-literature/

MARIENBAD MY LOVE
Neighborsgo.com (2 March 2008) Texas Pages (3 March 2008) Dallas Morning News (8 March 2008) The Coyote Insight Blog (12 March 2008) linkfilter.net (11 April 2008) colborne2016.com (16 May 2008) News Release (6 July 2008) io9.com (8 July 2008) FilmStew.com (8 July 2008) absolutewrite.com (8 July 2008) The Stranger, Seattle's only Newspaper (8 July 2008) Justin "Web Site'" Paszul (8 July 2008) waldoathome.blogspot.com (9 July 2008) Film In Focus (15 July 2008) smijey.livejournal.com (27 July 2008)

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===========================================================
Justin "Web Site' Paszul

Marienbad My LoveOh my. A
12.6 million word novel (ten times longer than Proust!). Sounds pretty great
(there’s also time travel and alternate Nazi histories and insect aliens and a
4.4-million-letter word that means “god within” and who the hell knows what
else):
Exiled on a deserted island, a Christ-haunted
journalist-turned-filmmaker attempts to persuade a married woman 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.

http://solidgoldpants.tumblr.com/post/41522819/marienbad-my-love
===========================================================
That's One Long Book, My Love
15 July 2008
Written by the late French novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet, director Alain
Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad is one of the iconic films of the French
New Wave, an often obscure and elliptical movie that has continued to intrigue
and entrance viewers since it was released in 1961. Each person who watches it
will likely view Resnais' masterpiece in a slightly different way, however none
have reacted quite as strongly or enthusiastically as Mark Leach. The Texan
writer began Marienbad My Love in the 1980s, creating what is
probably the only piece of Nouvelle Vague fan fiction on record. (And yes, film
geeks, you do get extra points for spotting the reference to Resnais' other
great film of the era, Hiroshima Mon Amour…) The book, available online
as a download through Leach's site, is about a man stuck on a desert island who
believes he must bring about the end of the world by directing a sci-fi remake
of Marienbad. If that doesn't sound loopy enough, the book is a whopping
12.5 million words in length, as Leach's initial crack at the book only further
inspired him. "When I released the first edition of Marienbad My Love,
2.5 million words seemed plenty long for a 21st century Apocalypse," the author
admits. "But the ideas kept coming, and the story kept growing. Now I feel like
I'm just getting warmed up." According to an article on the book, Leach's magnum opus also
contains a "4,400,000-letter noun and a three million-word sentence."

http://www.filminfocus.com/week-in-film/week-in-film-31.php

===========================================================
Smiley (smijey) wrote,
@ 2008-07-27 00:09:00

Marienbad, My Love
So, I've
discovered a delightful 'little' novel named Marienbad, My Love for short (the
full title is 61 pages long). It's supposed to clock in at over 10 million
words, making it the longest novel ever written. I'm already on page 15 of the
first part, and I think I'm going to try and read the whole thing. It can't be
any worse than A Study In Scarlet, anyway.

http://marienbadmylove.com

http://smijey.livejournal.com/71016.html

===========================================================
Neighborsgo.com

2 March 2008

Coppell writer publishes world’s longest novel

Mark Leach doesn’t claim his 2.5 million-word novel is the world’s
greatest, only the longest.

The Coppell, Texas, writer is making a run
at the record books with “Marienbad My Love,” the 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. “Two and half million words seems about right.”

“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. “Marienbad My Love" is more than twice as long as 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, when he and
his wife moved to Coppell. In fact, the fictional town of Strangers Rest is
largely based on circa 1988 Coppell.
"Back then Coppell was much smaller
than it is today, but the development had already begun,” he said. “We’d drive
past a new housing subdivision, then go to the post office and see somebody in
boots and spurs. One afternoon we actually had somebody ride up in our front
yard on horseback."
By no means does Leach believe his record will stand
unchallenged. Some list makers insist the world’s longest novel in English is
actually Henry Darger's “In the Realms of the Unreal,” an unpublished,
15,000-page fantasy manuscript that is believed to have a word count in the
millions. In 2007, Richard Grossman announced plans to publish “Breeze Avenue,”
a multi-author, 3 million-page novel with an estimated word count of more than 1
billion.

But Leach is untroubled by the competition. He is hedging his
bet by also challenging the records for longest sentence with a 510,000-word
creation and longest book title, a rambling, 6,700-word entry that begins
“Marienbad My Love in the Ruins of the dreams and memories…” Those records are
currently claimed by writer Nigel Tomm, whose book "The Blah Story, Volume 4"
consists of one sentence containing 469,375 words, and a college principal in
India who wrote a book on the actor Daniel Radcliffe with a title of 1,022
words.

A free ebook download of "Marienbad My Love" is available at
marienbadmylove.com.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Comments
Oscar Martinez
Date Posted: Mar 3, 2008 at 9:12 PM
CST
Don't know about the world's longest novel, but I seem to recall "Last
Year at Marienbad" being one of the longest movies ever - the long shots of the
empty ballrooms, the constant references to the balustrade ... ah, it all comes
flooding back in vivid art-film black and white ...

===========================================================
waldoathome.blogspot.com/

Taking the long view, to a fault

....Here's news of the longest novel in history (free; downloadable if you
dare. And it has Nazis and aliens):

Texas writer Mark Leach has
published an expanded edition of "Marienbad My Love," the world's longest
published novel in English, that tops 12.6 million words and also sets new
records for the world's longest word, sentence and book title.

Leach 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 of "Marienbad My Love" in March, the original length of 2.5
million words seemed plenty long 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. “Marienbad My Love" is almost ten times as long as 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.”

Leach also claims that "Marienbad My Love"
includes:

* the world's longest word. Also called "the holy Jah," the
4.4-million-letter noun is a coinage of words from the world's faiths. It means
"god within."

* the world's longest sentence (3 million words).

*
the world's longest book title (6,700 words).
# # #

About
"Marienbad My Love"

"Marienbad My Love" by Mark Leach is a love story
for the end of the world. The novel features a protagonist who attempts to film
a science-fiction-themed pastiche to "Last Year at Marienbad." A free ebook
download of "Marienbad My Love" is available at marienbadmylove.com.

http://waldoathome.blogspot.com/2008/07/taking-long-view-to-fault.html

===========================================================
Making a Mess of Marienbad

The French New Wave film classic Last Year at Marienbad has
spawned a book that will take the average reader at least that long to get
through it.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008 at 1:40 PM

By FilmStew Staff

It’s unclear whether the late French novelist and screenwriter Alain
Robbe-Grillet, who passed away in February at the age of 85, would have been
flattered or insulted by the homage being currently paid to him by would-be
Texas writer Mark Leach. But in just a few months since the latter first
unveiled his tome Marienbad My Love in March, it has grown four-fold from its
voluminous starting length to an astonishing 12.6 million words.

Leach’s
book, begun in the late 1980’s, tells the story of a whacked out desert island
filmmaker who is convinced that he must bring about the end of the world by
producing a new sci-fi film version of the 1961 French New Wave classic Last
Year at Marienbad. The movie earned Robbe-Grillet an Academy Award nomination
for Best Original Screenplay.

“If you’re going to destroy the world, you
really ought to do it big,” suggests Leach, who is making his opus available
via the Internet as a free (and massive) download. “When I released the first
edition of Marienbad My Love, 2.5 million words seemed plenty long 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.”

Given the fact that the
Guinness Book of World Records lists the 1.5 million-word Marcel Proust work In
Search of Lost Time as the longest English-language novel, one would assume
that unless Leach fails to meet certain criteria as an author, he will soon be
usurping another Frenchman. If not, he can perhaps still take comfort in the
fact that his tale contains two other hard-to-beat milestones: a
4,400,000-letter noun and a three million-word sentence.

http://www.filmstew.com/showArticle.aspx?ContentID=17399

===========================================================
io9

Thrill-Crazed Space Bugs Swarm Through World's Longest
Novel

Got
some spare time? The world's longest novel is available as a free download!
Coppell, TX writer Mark Leach has just published an expanded 12.6 million word
edition of his apocalyptic novel Marienbad, My Love. It's nearly ten
times longer than the official record-holding longest novel, Proust's In
Search Of Lost Time, not to mention the previously longest science fiction
novel, L. Ron Hubbard's Mission Earth. And Leach says he's just
getting warmed up. How does he fill so much space?

Marienbad, My
Love is the story of a film-maker who believes he's God, or that Jesus is
talking to him, and he decides to make a science fiction movie that pays
tribute to one of the world's worst films, Last Year At Marienbad, in
order to end the world. The novel is peppered with David Lynch references as
well as sections from a faux novel in the style of later Kurt Vonnegut. And
"thrill-crazed space-bugs," the Cicadians (pictured above) show up, probably to
assist in the metafictional destruction of the universe. Plus there's a giant
UFO hanging over Earth, Nazi/alien collaborators, mind control, alien
abductions, and a mad scientist who's adding a substance called Fluoride9 to
the water to create the world's first privately owned deity.

Here's a
quote from Leach's press release:

“If you’re going to destroy the world,
you really ought to do it big,” Leach said. “When I released the first edition
of "Marienbad My Love" in March, the original length of 2.5 million words
seemed plenty long 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.”

Besides being crammed with weird ideas, Leach says Marienbad, My
Love includes:

the world's longest word. Also called "the holy
Jah," the 4.4-million-letter noun is a coinage of words from the world's
faiths. It means "god within."
the world's longest sentence (3 million
words).
the world's longest book title (6,700 words).

Who wants to be
the first to read the whole thing and report back to us?

12:40 PM on Tue Jul 8 2008
By Charlie Jane Anders
2,321 views
46
comments

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Comments
CPU at 12:57 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *

I'll wait for the "uncut"
13.6 million word version.

rhorsman at 12:57 PM on 07/08/08
Reply by Email *
awful movie Last Year At Marienbad

You misspelled
"awesome."

Plague at 01:02 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
Connectedness Index: 54
@rhorsman:
I know!
I read that and said
"what the hell?"

tollwaytroll at 01:08 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by
Email *
There's a sentence that is 3 million words long? Being a sentence
that takes up one fourth of the narrative?

Think I'll pass.

crashedpc at 01:13 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *

[marienbadmylove.com]

I was hoping for a little light reading to
occupy me for the rest of the year. But now I have no idea who's going to read
this. Seriously, part 17A-F is the longest sentence ever, but it's mostly
rambling and hard to focus on after, oh, say, page 300.

Part 19A-D is
the part where the name of the Supreme Deity is written... literally like 500
pages of just the same text being repeated again and again. I'm not sure if
that's considered cheating when it comes to word count. Wait, not word count,
character count. It's just one word, after all.

I'm probably not
sophisticated enough to understand his work.

Jason1749 at 01:17 PM
on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *

You know, when I was in college and had
the late-shift at the campus radio station, the janitor would spend time in the
recording booth after he was done working and record "his" version of the
bible, word-for-word.

I wonder if the author of this book and that guy
are related? They seem to be operating on the same wave-length of
crazy.

Garrison Dean, Mr.... at 01:17 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by
Email * Connectedness Index: 140
Creating a 4 million letter long sentence
to make a book longer is cheating, out and out. It's like, you know, when in
school which was a really really really really boring place and your teacher
made you write very very very very stupid assignments and she said that they
had to be at least 100 words so you had to be super hyper big time full of
baloney to try to craaaaaaam it full of enough words and words and words and
numerous short cuts in order to reach the 100 word mark on something that you
knew absolutely positively truly nothing about because you did a very very tiny
tiny amount of research on it because you wanted to watch TV.

And then I
woke up.

DSTRYA at 01:25 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *

@Plague: @rhorsman: WORD UP. anybody who describes Marienbad as such and
mashes Hiroshima, mon amour into the title to be snarky gets a big FAIL.

Dunny0 at 01:30 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
@Garrison Dean,
King Awesome: 128 words? I think you can do better - see me after class.

icelight at 01:33 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
@tollwaytroll:
Not only that, but a 4.4 million character word sounds like someone fell asleep
with their face on the keyboard (or left their cat on it for a few days) and
didn't feel like deleting any of it. Honestly, not really that attractive of a
proposition.

Tim Faulkner at 01:33 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *

@Garrison Dean, King Awesome: "Creating a 4 million letter long sentence to
make a book longer is cheating, out and out."

Cheating himself actually.
That's one word when it could have been a few hundred thousand words
easily.

Of course, there have been many a sufferer of graphomania more
prolific than Proust, but putting out a press release doesn't make the product
of that mania cogent enough to unseat In Search of Lost Time in any sane man's
mind.

lazyeight at 01:43 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *

@rhorsman: @Plague: I feel like I'm losing my mind. I reread &
reread the post and the closest I could come to the quote was 'world's worst
films, Last Year at Marienbad'.
"Things come and go so quickly around here"
- Alice

russdanger at 01:47 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by
Email *
Free download, huh?

I'm waiting for a better deal...If it
were a real book I could use it to heat my home this coming
winter...

Did someone actually count the words in the three million word
sentence, or was this an estimate based on acreage?

DrJimmy at
01:48 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *

Leach and his heirs can scream as
loud as they want, I'm not gonna pay royalties by the word.

Tim
Faulkner at 01:48 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
@rhorsman: @Plague:
@lazyeight: Have no fear. Much of this post is cut and pasted from the nutbag
himself, not Charlie's own views (I hope):

"Panned as one of the worst
movies of all time, "Next Year at Marienbad" would seem to offer little of
interest to the serious cinemaphile. It is informally plain and barely
viewable. The linear time is scrambled in a world where people appear trapped
in a shadowy place beyond the outer marker of reality."

Of course,
thankfully, he's saved us the trouble and self-diagnosed himself as suffering
from post modern prophet disorder.

[marienbadmylove.com]

willentrekin at 01:56 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
"Longest"
being no actual signifier toward quality. Any of the words actually any good?
Because it doesn't sound that way.

Smeagol92055 at 01:57 PM on
07/08/08 Reply by Email *

Oh, fuck it. I can stop reading Battlefield
Earth and read this instead for you guys if you'll all pitch in a buck for the
expense, time, and brain cells.

Tim Faulkner at 02:01 PM on
07/08/08 Reply by Email *
@Tim Faulkner: Funny how Leach deems Harry Medved
a more "serious cinemaphile" than the Motion Picture Academy or Venice Film
Festival. [en.wikipedia.org]

Smeagol92055 at 02:13 PM on 07/08/08
Reply by Email *

OK, well I'm appointing myself official book reviewer
for this one, having found the link and downloaded the files.

Anyone
want to race me?

Good God, what have I committed myself to?
If I
don't make it out alive, I just want you all to know I secretly loved Spiderman
3. There. I said it.

crashedpc at 02:15 PM on 07/08/08
Reply by Email *
@Smeagol92055:

I didn't make it past the TITLE. I
salute your tenaciousness, and I'll make sure that your love for Spiderman 3
memorialized forever on your tombstone.

Dunny0 at 02:18 PM on
07/08/08 Reply by Email *
@Smeagol92055: Godspeed you crazy bastard!

Smeagol92055 at 02:30 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *

@Dunny0: *straps on goggles*
I don't need luck... I've got
PATRIOTISM! HOOOOOO!!!!

[io9.com]

Charlie Jane
Anders at 02:36 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email * Connectedness Index: 235

@Tim Faulkner: Yeah, I have never seen Last Night At Marienbad and have
only vaguely read about it... but Leach is very emphatic that it's a terrible
movie.

crashedpc at 02:37 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *

@crashedpc:

IS memorialized. Two comments to my name... not off to a
good start.

Tim Faulkner at 02:46 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *

@Charlie Jane Anders: If you've read Robbe-Grillet's The Erasers (or any of
his novels for that matter) and liked them... if you can appreciate some French
cinema under some circumstances, Marienbad is at least a hundred times better
than Alphaville (ducks) and certainly no worse than many a highly-lauded French
film.

Charlie Jane Anders at 02:48 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
Connectedness Index: 235
@Smeagol92055: Thanks for your dedication to the
cause of literature. Definitely email me when you've read and reviewed it! But
remember, no skimming!

Jay042 at 02:48 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by
Email *
@Smeagol92055: I'm tempted to read it too. But I think I'll wait on
your appraisal first

Tim Faulkner at 02:56 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by
Email *
@Charlie Jane Anders: @Charlie Jane Anders: "...but Leach is very
emphatic that it's a terrible movie."

He also thinks linking to word
docs on the Internet makes him published.

I Think We're Property at
03:03 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *

I'm glad that there are always
people ready and willing to once again demonstrate for the world that just
because something is obtuse, pretentious, and unpopular, does not necessarily
mean that it is art.

Jay042 at 03:11 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by
Email *
@Tim Faulkner: He also thinks linking to word docs on the Internet
makes him published.

I noticed that too. You'd think he'd at least make
it html or a PDF file...

Evil Tortie's Mom at 03:14 PM on 07/08/08
Reply by Email *
@Smeagol92055: Smeagol: He reads shit so we don't have
to.

I both pity and admire you.

Smeagol92055 at 03:14 PM on
07/08/08 Reply by Email *

@Charlie Jane Anders: Oh, no skimming
whatsoever. Well, maybe except for that 4-million letter word. Honestly. Who
makes a 4-million letter word?

It's so insane, I'm tempted to actually
read it and figure out how to phonetically prounounce it.

And then put
it on a T-shirt!

RemusShepherd at 03:14 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by
Email *

Hey, @Smeagol92055, while you're reading it, mind recording me
an audio version? ;)

Cacafuego at 03:16 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by
Email *

@I Think We're Property:
Amen to that.
I was working in a
Waldenbooks in the 1980s when this confused looking fellow came up to me with a
copy of DIANETICS and asked me if he was missing something. He'd read it and it
just didn't make any sense to him. I said, no, you're okay, the book isn't.
Since the district manager at the time was a $cientologist (they infilitrated
the heirachy of Waldenbooks pretty badly back then, fyi), I was taking
something of a risk telling the poor fellow that he wasn't too stupid to
understand the book--he wasn't stupid
enough.

Smeagol92055 at 03:17 PM on 07/08/08 Reply
by Email *

@Evil Tortie's Mom: On second thought, I'm putting that on a
T-shirt.

Smeagol92055 at 03:18 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *

@RemusShepherd: As soon as I figure out how to pronounce that "god
within" part. :p

Smeagol92055 at 04:19 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by
Email *
My God... I just finished reading the synopsis over at the website.
My eyes hurt with the awfulness that is this thing's plot.

Tim
Faulkner at 04:27 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
@Smeagol92055: Too late,
you've committed. See you in a few months... or years.

kosure at
06:00 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
I've got to point to Henry Darger's
manuscript for "The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms
of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave
Rebellion". I don't know how many words it's got, but at 15,145 pages long,
it's got to be a contender for the title.

Tim Faulkner at 06:41 PM
on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
@kosure: It's mostly illustrations.

Evil Tortie's Mom at 07:42 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *

@Smeagol92055: It would fit a lot better.

But can it be a true
classic if the hero never says "Mrifk!"?

Pegritz at 09:56 PM on
07/08/08 Reply by Email *
Uhhhhh, yeah. Quantity != Quality. Even the
synopsis alone is complete shit. Welcome to the world's largest Complete Waste
of Time. At least _Finnegans Wake_ has finally been dethroned.

Tannhauser23 at 10:01 PM on 07/08/08 Reply by Email *
Somebody
put the god's name into Microsoft Sam!

daydalus at 08:01 AM on
07/09/08 Reply by Email *

I'm willing to bet he generated the text with
some sort of Markov chain. I read about a half page of part 16 and you can see
where the grammer doesn't match up (switching tenses, mismatched
subject/object, etc) - classic output of a Markov generated text. Definitly
cheating in my book.

Check it out: [www.beetleinabox.com]

"Oh
holy one of subways, all house flesh, old Strangers Rest stretches the lamps,
insects and nocturnal and clear, throwing off carnivorous aquatic insects
swimming down to the underworld to crumbling failure somewhere near feral cat
stalks its shadow, in the east, a funeral urns and metal shipping name of the
holy being, who the screams and the you still use the same holy one, and I
couldn't you write any better the kings of the containers, glowing glass
transistors a ruined wall marked filled his celestial robot from the by a
winged demon, transforming from the forbidden fruit, cables and flesh-coated
wheels and ominous rumblings escape and that dark was it's me, my reflection
caught silently above the marshes and heart pulsing in the ghost units,
wreckage of first giant tongue in the sky went and they did not repent and sun
shone fuller and fuller the president of Uruguay, a radio torn from the leave,
go down to the giant tongue in the sky filled his celestial robot from
places"

Smeagol92055 at 08:31 AM on 07/09/08 Reply by Email *

@daydalus: Yeah. Did you read the title? It was like 60 pages of that.

willentrekin at 04:10 PM on 07/10/08 Reply by Email *
Anyone
looking for a better book in fewer pages, btw, is welcome to check out mine: http://stores.lulu.com/willentrekin

And it's
free!

http://io9.com/5023076/thrill+crazed-space-bugs-swarm-through-worlds-longest-novel

====================================================================
absolutewrite.com

07-08-2008, 03:42 PM #1
Kitty Pryde

The World's Longest Book

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So
this Mark Leach guy has written a book which he is claiming is the longest
novel ever published, Marienbad My Love. 12.6 million words. I think it's ebook
published only. I hope so for the trees' sake. He's also claiming
-the
world's longest word. Also called "the holy Jah," the 4.4-million-letter noun
is a coinage of words from the world's faiths. It means "god within."
-the
world's longest sentence (3 million words).
-the world's longest book title
(6,700 words).

Books homepage:
http://marienbadmylove.com/default.aspx
Press release:
http://www.prlog.org/10086581-worlds...ng-longer.html

I'll quote you the
opening paragraph for funsies:

Quote:
Again I advance across the
tragic beaches of this deserted island, footsteps upon sand so profound, so
deep, that one perceives no step. Mute beaches, where footsteps are lost. Mute,
deserted – footsteps upon sand over which I advance once again. To find you.

What's your take? Brilliant outsider art? Throwing common sense to the
wind? Spectacle to break a world record? Mental health
concerns?
__________________
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07-08-2008, 04:09 PM
#2
Medievalist
Cultus Gopherus MacAllister

Join
Date: Feb 2005
Posts: 6,687
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kitty Pryde

I'll quote you the opening paragraph for funsies:

What's your
take? Brilliant outsider art? Throwing common sense to the wind? Spectacle to
break a world record? Mental health concerns?

Quote:
Again I advance across the tragic beaches of this deserted island, footsteps upon sand so profound, so deep, that one perceives no step. Mute beaches, where footsteps are lost. Mute, deserted – footsteps upon sand over which I advance once again. To find you.

Dude opens with "I" then in the same sentence has "that
one perceives no step."

Lit fic wannabe with a tin
ear.
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07-08-2008, 04:18 PM #3
ColoradoGuy
I've seen
worse.
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07-09-2008, 09:27 AM #4
TerzaRima
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fanatic

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prairie
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Quote:
What's your take? Brilliant outsider art?
Throwing common sense to the wind? Spectacle to break a world record? Mental
health concerns?

Hypomania, lots of time on hands, doesn't get out very
much, needs more lithium and less bandwidth. /online quack
diagnosis
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07-09-2008, 09:47 AM #5
CaroGirl
I peekee at
you

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Just a novelty. Not even as satisfying as my novel tea, which I shall
take with a crumpet this very afternoon.
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07-09-2008, 10:37 AM #6

Shadow_Ferret
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Kitty Pryde
What's your take? Brilliant
outsider art? Throwing common sense to the wind? Spectacle to break a world
record? Mental health concerns?

A lame attempt to attract attention and
nothing more.

That opening paragraph. Holy... and just think, there's
only 12,599,957 more words to
go.
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07-09-2008, 10:51 AM #7
benbradley

8arned

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The real question:
Is it good enough for
trunknovels.com?
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07-09-2008, 11:26 AM #8
TerzaRima
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For stuff like this, we need a thread called
something like Literary Onanism: Spilling Our Synonyms on the
Ground.
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Today, 06:16 AM #9
Buddikins
Super
Member

Join Date: May 2008
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Posts:
77
What's the plot??
It'd wanna be bloody brilliant..
And please
dont tell me it's all like that^^
Poor bloke.. although he could also claim
world's most unreadable novel? Maybe that'd be a
comfort
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http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2533825

===================================================================
8 July 2008

The Stranger, Seattle's Only Newspaper

Books

I’ll Wait Until the Trilogy is Done
posted by Paul Constant at 3:45 PM

io9 reports
on the new, free downloadable version of the world’s longest novel, Marienbad, My Love, by Mark Leach. It’s 12.6 million words
long. The press release has all kinds of interesting information about the
book’s record-breakingness, including:

* the world’s longest word. Also
called “the holy Jah,” the 4.4-million-letter noun is a coinage of words from
the world’s faiths. It means “god within.”
* the world’s longest sentence
(3 million words).
* the world’s longest book title (6,700
words).

The website also has the Top Ten reasons to read
Marienbad, My Love:

1. A giant orbiting UFO 2.
Nazi/alien collaborations 3. Alien abductions 4. Human/alien hybrids 5. Mind
control 6. Religious insects from outer space 7. A mad scientist 8. An evil CEO
9. A time-traveling, green-skinned monster of the unconscious 10. The end of
the world

You know, I’ve been trying to find another book to revive Book Club of the
Damned here on Slog, but I think I’d rather choose a book that I can
successfully read in my lifetime. Still and all, it’s totally free! Go!
Download! Enjoy! And don’t say I never gave you
anything.

Permalink | Post Comments (11)

Comments on I'll Wait Until the Trilogy is Done

1
It can't possibly be any good if its main selling points are its
length and a long word.

Posted by Jason Josephes | July 8, 2008 3:51 PM

2
This is equivalent to the worlds largest hamburger; a feat that means
nothing because the substance of it isn't consumable.

Posted by
Bellevue Ave | July 8, 2008 3:52 PM
3
Hmm. I remember reading a German
SF series that had many hundreds of books ... if those were compiled together,
it might be longer.

Remember, never fear the Decalogy ...

Posted
by Will in Seattle | July 8, 2008 3:56 PM
4
Vomit.

Posted by
Fnarf | July 8, 2008 4:00 PM
5
Someone read too much Faulkner in
school...

Posted by Jubilation T. Cornball | July 8, 2008 4:12 PM
6

The downloads are .doc files! Absurd!

Posted by Chris | July 8, 2008
4:13 PM
7
on the upside, one word is 1/3 of the book.

a mad
scientist and an evil CEO?!
that's tempting reading.

Posted by chops
| July 8, 2008 4:23 PM
8
Isn't this a job for a new public
intern?

Posted by vooodooo84 | July 8, 2008 4:31 PM
9
A novel
whose only claim to fame is some stupid record-breaking is sci-fi/fantasy? I'm
shocked.

Posted by Emily | July 8, 2008 4:44 PM
10
Wow, they
really are distributing .doc files. Any bets at least one of them contains a
macro virus?

Posted by lostboy | July 8, 2008 4:51 PM
11
No, no,
no. This is not a book. This is a stupid gimmick dressed up to look like a
book. Inside a .doc file that probably has a few macro viruses.

Posted
by Greg | July 9, 2008 9:35 AM

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:FDqFWhWa9_wJ:www.thestranger.com/seattle/Books%3Fsn+%22marienbad+my+love%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=29&gl=us

================================================================
16 May 2008

How many books do you read…
Published by David Colborne
at 9:51 pm under Uncategorized

With a 60 page long title? The answer,
of course, is probably zero… and, if you know what’s good for you, you’ll go
nowhere near the latest addition to my “F—ing Weird” category, Marienbad My
Love. It’s only the longest English language novel in existence. Oh, and it’s
over 3000 pages long. Yes, it’s a free download. No, I don’t recommend it. It’s
apparently about a religious man who wants to remake a science fiction movie to
create a new religion, but somehow involves some woman that doesn’t remember
him… it only gets less coherent from there.

With that, I am done.

http://www.colborne2016.com/2008/05/16/how-many-books-do-you-read/

================================================================
World's Longest Novel Keeps Getting Longer

New edition of Mark Leach's "Marienbad My Love" tops 12.6 million
words; also sets records for longest word, sentence and book title

Issued By: Mark Leach
Jul 06, 2008 19:14:02

FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PRLog (Press Release) – Jul 06, 2008 – Coppell, TX -
Texas writer Mark Leach has published an expanded edition of "Marienbad My
Love," the world's longest published novel in English, that tops 12.6 million
words and also sets new records for the world's longest word, sentence and book
title.
Leach 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 of "Marienbad My
Love" in March, the original length of 2.5 million words seemed plenty long 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. “Marienbad My
Love" is almost ten times as long as 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.”

Leach also claims that
"Marienbad My Love" includes:

* the world's longest word. Also called
"the holy Jah," the 4.4-million-letter noun is a coinage of words from the
world's faiths. It means "god within."

* the world's longest sentence
(3 million words).

* the world's longest book title (6,700 words).
#
# #

About "Marienbad My Love"

"Marienbad My Love" by Mark Leach
is a love story for the end of the world. The novel features a protagonist who
attempts to film a science-fiction-themed pastiche to "Last Year at Marienbad."
A free ebook download of "Marienbad My Love" is available at
marienbadmylove.com.

# #
=================================================================
The post goes on forever, the novel never ends

10:14 AM Mon, Mar 03, 2008

Michael Merschel

Here is a very 21st century moment. Neighborsgo.com has story about a
Coppell man who says he has set a record for the world's longest published
novel.

The author himself "doesn't claim his 2.5 million-word novel is the
world's greatest, only the longest."
And thus begins another week in modern
arts commentary: A self-published novel, notable only for its size, becomes a
self-reported news article, which becomes a blog post for a bleary-eyed editor
on a Monday morning.

It can only get better from here, right?

http://neighborsgo.beloblog.com/archives/2008/03/coppell_writer_publishes_world.html

http://booksblog.guidelive.com/archives/2008/03/the-infinite-loop-goes-on-fore.html

=================================================================
The following "chatter" was posted on
linkfilter.net on April 11, 2008 regarding marienbadmylove.com
...

!! groinflower is around.

Serisan> Sup yo?

!! shigpit is around.

!! clu is around.

Ss> nada

!! Ss just posted Marienbad My Love.

!! puptentacle is around.

Serisan> I find it funny that the "Top Ten
Reasons to read Marienbad, My Love" were actually my top ten reasons NOT to
read it.

Ss> Pious giant cicadas don't draw you
in, eh?

!! Mac just posted Aerobic fitness could delay
aging by up to 12 years.

Serisan> That was the most interesting of the
things listed. Mad scientists with mind altering, water-based chemicals working
for a corporate sponsor? Not so much :-p

Ss> It's probably awesome. You should read it.
What are you doing in the next four months or so?

Serisan> Anything else...

Serisan> I've actually been pondering the
notion of hanging out with people and discussing things germaine to my degree.
That would be far more entertaining, IMO.

Ss> germaine to your degree? What could be
germaine?

=================================================================
The Coyote Insight Blog
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Accidental Obfuscation

Language is at once lengthy detail of what we need/want to
communicate as well as much shorthand when brevity is required, with a lot of
space between the two extremes. And I mean a lot of space. For example while
there are many claims to the world’s longest English sentence some of the more
interesting come from literature including one 13,955 word contender in
Jonathan Coe’s novel, The Rotters’ Club. Or a 510,000 word monster
representing 20% of the 2.5 million word longest novel published in English
(Marienbad My Love) written by Mark Leach. ....

Read the rest of the story at http://coyoteinsight.blogspot.com/

======================================================================================================================================

The following story appeared in the March 8, 2008,
edition of the Neighborsgo section of The Dallas Morning
News.

Local man pens longest novel

STAFF REPORT

Mark Leach doesn’t claim his 2.5 million-word novel is the world’s greatest
-- only the longest.

The Coppell writer is making a run at the record
books with Marienbad My Love, the 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. “Two and half million words
seems about right.”

Marienbad My Love 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.
Marienbad My Love is more than twice as long as 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, when he and his wife moved to Coppell. In fact, the fictional town of
Strangers Rest is largely based on circa 1988 Coppell.

By no means does
Leach believe his record will stand unchallenged. Some list makers insist the
world’s longest novel in English is actually Henry Darger's In the Realms
of the Unreal, an unpublished, 15,000-page fantasy manuscript that is
believed to have a word count in the millions.

In 2007, Richard Grossman announced plans to publish Breeze Avenue,
a multi-author, 3 million-page novel with an estimated word count of more than
1 billion.

But Leach is untroubled by the competition. He is hedging his
bet by also challenging the records for longest sentence with a 510,000-word
creation and longest book title, a rambling, 6,700-word entry that begins
“Marienbad My Love in the Ruins of the dreams and memories…” Those records are
currently claimed by writer Nigel Tomm, whose book The Blah Story, Volume
4 consists of one sentence containing 469,375 words, and a college
principal in India who wrote a book on the actor Daniel Radcliffe with a title
of 1,022 words.

A free e-book download of Marienbad My Love is available at
marienbadmylove.com.

A modified version of this article appears at http://www.prlog.org/10060756-texas-writer-pens-world-longest-novel.html