Welcome to 'Marienbad My Love.' I assembled this multi-million-word, multi-volume work through calculation and chance. It consists of fragments of pre-existing texts both written and appropriated by me over the course of 30-plus years. I like to think of it as 'the movie of all my labors and all my inspirations.'
As of Feb. 1, 2013, 'Marienbad My Love' consisted of 17 volumes totaling 17.8 million words and 10,710 pages. While I have not added to the book in recent years, I still consider it to be a work in progress. I plan to make it my big project in retirement. But that's still a few years off.
What is this novel about? Here is the book jacket copy: 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.
Want to buy a copy of your own? First, be sure to secure a sturdy bookcase. Because as you can see in the adjacent photo, it's a big and heavy novel. 'Marienbad My Love' weighs 65 pounds and 11.4 ounces. This is serious literature.
Sometimes you can find print versions of 'Marienbad My Love' for sale on Amazon or ebay. If you really want a copy, buy it when you can. Because at various times, this novel has been deleted from online platforms. The reasons vary. One vendor told me they would no longer offer the book because they had decided it provided 'a poor customer experience.'
I like to think of 'Marienbad My Love' as the world's largest 'open source' novel. You are invited to copy, distribute and transmit this work, in whole or part. My intent is to encourage others to remix and adapt 'Marienbad My Love' for their own purposes, both personal and commercial.
For your reading and writing convenience, the original 2008 edition of the novel is available for free download via the 'DRIVE-IN' link below. (NOTE: I am also in the process of posting the PDFs of the 2013 edition. Just go to 'Download Marienbad My Love (2013)' at http://www.marienbadmylove.com/download-marienbad-my-love-2013.html​ .)
​To learn more about how you can make use of this free offer, click on the Creative Commons link below.
​
-Mark Leach
November 2020

Welcome to the world's largest 'open source' novel. The original 2008 edition of the novel is available for free download via the 'DRIVE-IN' link. You are invited to copy, distribute and transmit this work, in whole or part. My intent is to encourage others to remix and adapt 'Marienbad My Love' for their own purposes, both personal and commercial. To learn more about how you can make use of this free offer, click on the Creative Commons link below.
'Marienbad My Love' is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States
License.

Mark Leach (1961, Waco, United States) is an artist who mainly works with contemporary strategies. By experimenting with aleatoric processes, Leach formalizes the coincidental and emphasizes the conscious process of composition that is behind the seemingly random works. The thought processes, which are supposedly private, highly subjective and unfiltered in their references to dream worlds, are frequently revealed as assemblages that explore new ideas in language ideologies, crowdsourcing and aggregate authorship.
Leach creates situations in which everyday objects are altered or detached from their natural function. By applying specific combinations and certain manipulations, different functions and/or contexts are created. With the use of appropriated materials which are borrowed from a day-to-day context, he presents everyday objects as well as references to texts, painting and architecture. Pompous writings and Utopian constructivist designs are juxtaposed with trivial objects. Categories are subtly reversed.
His works feature coincidental, accidental and unexpected connections which make it possible to revise art history and, even better, to complement it. Combining unrelated aspects lead to surprising analogies.
These ideas are on display in a variety of works, including the 17-million-word 'Marienbad My Love,' the world's longest novel. His book 'Cutting Up Two Burroughs' has garnered attention on the Poetry Foundation's Harriet news blog (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2012/04/more-otherness-from-conceptual-literature/ ). Mark Leach currently lives and works in Texas.

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.
.
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.
Marienbad My Love's
Top 10 List
of the World's Longest Novels
1 Mark Leach, Marienbad My Love
(17 million words)
2 Nigel Tomm, The Blah
Story
(11 million words)
3 Henry Darger, The Story of the Vivian Girls
(9 million words)
4 Madeleine and Georges de Scudéry, Artamène
(2.1
million words)
5 Marcel Proust, À la recherche du temps perdu
(1.5 million
words)
6 L. Ron Hubbard, Mission Earth
(1.2 million words)
7 Madison
Cooper, Sironia, Texas
(1.1 million words)
8 Samuel Richardson,
Clarissa
(969,000 words)
9 Xavier Herbert, Poor Fellow My
Country
(850,000 words)
10 Marguerite Young, Miss MacIntosh, My
Darling
(700,000 words)
* listed by word count
** Other long novels
with unconfirmed word counts include Gordana by Marija Juric Zagorka (5,200
pages); A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell (12 volumes estimated at
more than 1 million words); Knickers by Simon Roberts (14.2 million characters
including spaces); Tokugawa Ieyasu by Sohachi Yamaoka; Daibosatsu Toge by
Nakazato Kaizan; Dream of the Pomegranate Flowers by Li Guiyu; Kuangshi Qiyuan
by Yang Fuguo; Li Zicheng by Yao Xueyin; Avakasikal by Vilasini; Dream of the
Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Author Invites Public To Plagiarize World’s Longest Novel
Want to publish a novel but don’t have time to write? Mark Leach has a deal for you.
The Texas-based writer is lifting copyright protections on “Marienbad My
Love,” the world’s longest novel, to encourage wide-scale copying, distribution,
transmission and remixing of the 17-million-word work.
“William Burroughs
said that words don’t have brands on them the way cattle do,” Leach said. “Today
I am opening the gates of my literary corral and turning ‘Marienbad My Love’
loose on the public. Lasso as many words as you want. In fact, steal the whole
herd.”
Leach is making “Marienbad My Love” available through a Creative Commons
license, which allows authors to offer their copyrighted work to the public for
free and legal sharing, use, repurposing and remixing.
“The remixing
opportunity is what really excites me,” he said. “I find it astonishing that
2009 is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Burroughs’ ‘Naked Lunch,' a
novel that remixed snippets of other writers' texts into a new and unique work.
While the book regularly shows up on lists of the best novels of the 20th
century, relatively few writers have followed Burroughs’ remixing lead. The
conceptual poet Kenneth Goldsmith recently asked ‘why hasn't straight
appropriation become a valid, sustained or even tested literary practice?’ I
couldn’t agree more. By inviting the public to legally ‘plagiarize’ my work, I
hope to awaken a new generation of writers to the vast possibilities of literary
appropriation as a valid creative endeavor. Steal my words and make them your
own.”
- Nov. 29, 2009
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, 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)..
- October 2008

WHO:
MARK LEACH
WHAT:
LONGEST NOVEL
WHERE:
UNITED STATES
WHEN:
01 FEB 2013
'Marienbad My Love' by Mark Leach contains 109,465,318 characters (each letter counts as one character. Spaces are also counted, as one character each).
Seeking writers and artists with publishing background to provide independent witness statements verifying size of MARIENBAD MY LOVE, a 17-million-word, 17-volume work of conceptual writing to be submitted to Guinness World Records for evaluation as world’s longest novel. No pay; participants receive free electronic copies of book and public acknowledgement. Interested parties should send a CV, résumé or bio detailing publishing experience to markleach61@hotmail.com
Guinness World Records requires submission of two independent witness statements from individuals with a publishing background. These statements must declare:
* the exact amount of characters (as well as the method used to derive the total) - 'Marienbad My Love' is 109,465,318 characters (with spaces). Character counts were measured for each of the 17 volumes using Microsoft Word (one volume per Word document). The final count was produced in an Excel spread sheet. For verification purposes, screen shots of the 17 Word documents and Excel summary are pasted below.
* the number of pages - 'Marienbad My Love' is 10,710 pages. Page counts were measured for each of the 17 volumes using Microsoft Word (one volume per Word document). The final count was produced in an Excel spread sheet. For verification purposes, screen shots of the 17 Word documents and Excel summary are pasted below.
* the weight of the novel - 'Marienbad My Love' is 65 pounds and 11.4 ounces. The weight was measured on a U.S. Postal Service scale. For verification purposes, a photo showing the 17 volumes sitting on the scale and the total weight indicated on the screen is pasted below.