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This Is Not a Novel and Other Novels
David Markson was a writer like no other. In his novels, which have been called "hypnotic," "stunning," and "exhilarating" and earned him praise from the likes of Kurt Vonnegut and David Foster Wallace, Ann Beattie and Zadie Smith. Markson created his own personal genre. With crackling wit distilled into incantatory streams of thought on art, life, and death, Markson's work has delighted and astonished readers for decades.
Now for the first time, three of Markson's masterpieces are compiled into one page-turning volume: This Is Not a Novel, Vanishing Point, and The Last Novel. In This Is Not a Novel, readers meet an author, called only "Writer," who is weary unto death of making up stories, and yet is determined to seduce the reader into turning pages and getting somewhere. Vanishing Point introduces us to "Author," who sets out to transform shoeboxes crammed with note cards into a novel. In The Last Novel, we find an elderly author (referred to only as "Novelist") who announces that, since this will be his final effort, he possesses "carte blanche to do anything he damn well pleases."
United by their focus on the trials, calamities, absurdities and even tragedies of the creative life, these novels demonstrate David Markson's extraordinary intellectual richness--leaving readers, time after time, with the most indisputably original of reading experiences.
Now for the first time, three of Markson's masterpieces are compiled into one page-turning volume: This Is Not a Novel, Vanishing Point, and The Last Novel. In This Is Not a Novel, readers meet an author, called only "Writer," who is weary unto death of making up stories, and yet is determined to seduce the reader into turning pages and getting somewhere. Vanishing Point introduces us to "Author," who sets out to transform shoeboxes crammed with note cards into a novel. In The Last Novel, we find an elderly author (referred to only as "Novelist") who announces that, since this will be his final effort, he possesses "carte blanche to do anything he damn well pleases."
United by their focus on the trials, calamities, absurdities and even tragedies of the creative life, these novels demonstrate David Markson's extraordinary intellectual richness--leaving readers, time after time, with the most indisputably original of reading experiences.
441 pages, Paperback
First published March 15, 2016
42 people are currently reading
389 people want to read
About the author
David Markson
24 books359 followersDavid Markson was an American novelist, born David Merrill Markson in Albany, New York. He is the author of several postmodern novels, including This is Not a Novel, Springer's Progress, and Wittgenstein's Mistress. His most recent work, The Last Novel, was published in 2007 and received a positive review in the New York Times, which called it "a real tour de force."
Markson's work is characterized by an unconventional approach to narration and plot. While his early works may draw on the modernist tradition of William Faulkner and Malcolm Lowry, Markson says his later novels are "literally crammed with literary and artistic anecdotes" and "nonlinear, discontinuous, collage-like, an assemblage."
Dalkey Archive Press has published several of his novels. In December 2006, publishers Shoemaker & Hoard republished two of Markson's early crime novels Epitaph for a Tramp and Epitaph for a Dead Beat in one volume.
In addition to his novels, he has published a book of poetry and a critical study of Malcolm Lowry.
The movie Dirty Dingus Magee, starring Frank Sinatra, is based on Markson's first novel, The Ballad of Dingus Magee, an anti-Western. He wrote three crime novels early in his career.
Educated at Union College and Columbia University, Markson began his writing career as a journalist and book editor, periodically taking up work as a college professor at Columbia University, Long Island University, and The New School.
Markson died in his New York City, West Village apartment.
Markson's work is characterized by an unconventional approach to narration and plot. While his early works may draw on the modernist tradition of William Faulkner and Malcolm Lowry, Markson says his later novels are "literally crammed with literary and artistic anecdotes" and "nonlinear, discontinuous, collage-like, an assemblage."
Dalkey Archive Press has published several of his novels. In December 2006, publishers Shoemaker & Hoard republished two of Markson's early crime novels Epitaph for a Tramp and Epitaph for a Dead Beat in one volume.
In addition to his novels, he has published a book of poetry and a critical study of Malcolm Lowry.
The movie Dirty Dingus Magee, starring Frank Sinatra, is based on Markson's first novel, The Ballad of Dingus Magee, an anti-Western. He wrote three crime novels early in his career.
Educated at Union College and Columbia University, Markson began his writing career as a journalist and book editor, periodically taking up work as a college professor at Columbia University, Long Island University, and The New School.
Markson died in his New York City, West Village apartment.
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June 1, 2025 This is not a Novel is the first book in this David Markson trilogy.
The title sets us up for not expecting a novel, but there is, nevertheless, the skeleton of a novel hidden inside the book's 140 pages which are otherwise made up of borrowed quotes and repurposed facts, though it has to be said that the skeleton would hardly fill the end pages of the book were its sentence-bones fitted together. But if a person bothered to do that (who would do such a thing), they might figure out that the skeleton novel was about a character called Writer and his efforts to write a novel, hampered by the fact that he is more certain of what his novel isn't rather than what it is.
Little by very little, he comes to the conclusion that he, and only he, has the power to decide exactly what his novel might be shaping up to be.
As in, it could be:
—"a mural of sorts, if Writer says so"
—or "a polyphonic opera, if Writer says so"
—or "a series of cantos awaiting numbering, if Writer says so"
—or "a synthetic personal Finnegans Wake, if Writer so decides"
—or "even a novel, if Writer or Robert Rauschenberg says so."
When I came on Robert Rauschenberg’s name, I stopped short. To be honest, I stopped short frequently while reading David Markson's pages:
—sometimes to puzzle out just which author, artist, or character was being referenced: "And who are you? said he. Don't puzzle me; said I"
—sometimes to applaud a genius misquote: "Then Werther blew his silly brains out while Charlotte went on cutting bread and butter."
—sometimes in total surprise at the unexpected direction the quotes and snippets had taken, "There was a large rock near. She hurled her head at the stone, so that she broke her skull and was dead. Says the earliest version of Deirdre of the Sorrows"
—sometimes to check the origin and meaning of an obsolete word, eg: 'wanhope ', which means anguish or despair, and is hurled into the pages more than once
—sometimes to note a useful fact: "the earliest use of writing was for making lists. For commerce"
—sometimes to look up a name or an unattributed line of poetry: "Like a long-legged fly upon the stream, His mind moves upon silence" (that's from WB Yeats and I was glad I looked it up because the poem is beautiful (though I didn't copy it into the end pages as I'd done with a beautiful poem I found referenced in Markson's Reader's Block because, well..)).
Markson mostly doesn't give us any info on the literary and artistic personalities he mentions, presuming we are as well-read as he is, which is fair enough because if we are seasoned readers (and we have to be well peppered and well salted to read Markson), we should have some knowledge about all these people already, and/or a great desire to know more, which is why I stopped short so frequently.
So, as I was saying, I stopped short for artist Robert Rauschenberg, having the feeling that he might be useful for the purposes of this review—and being more than a bit partial to the "holy curiosity of enquiry" as Markson says Einstein put it. Indeed, I gave thanks to my holy curiosity of enquiry when I checked Rauschenberg’s wiki page.
Here's one of the serendipities I found: Rauschenberg, a twentieth century artist, once sent a telegram to the Iris Clert gallery in Paris which read, "This is a portrait of Iris Clert if I say so", which has to be what Markson is referencing with all his "if Writer says so" statements, basically the notion that an idea can be the artwork itself, something which perfectly describes Markson's bones-of-a-novel which is really only the idea of a novel.
What's more, Rauschenberg created much of his art out of 'found' and 'repurposed' materials exactly as Markson did in Reader's Block, as well as in the three novels collected in this volume. Rauschenberg maintained he valued the surprise for the viewer of finding things he'd collected anywhere and everywhere transformed by their new context inside an artwork. And surprise at finding odd and unusual facts and quotes is definitely a feature of Markson's work too—one I enjoyed. I never knew what he'd hurl at me next!
Incidentally, Rauschenberg and Markson were contemporaries and both lived in Greenwich village at one or another point of their lives.
The second novel in this volume is called Vanishing Point and reads like a continuation of This is Not a Novel which itself felt like a continuation of Reader's Block—although each can be read alone too. Markson says he didn't like the books being referred to as a 'tetrology'.
In Vanishing Point, Writer (formerly Reader in RB) has morphed into Author, and has begun classifying his notes for the 'idea' of a novel that was embedded in the pages of This is not a novel (which contained more than one reference to Magritte of 'ceci n'est pas une pipe' fame, though none to the 'pipe' itself ).
But much to my satisfaction, he continues to fill pages with found items, ie, odd quotes and snippets, eg: "How many things there are in the world that I do not want. Said Socrates, strolling through a marketplace in Athens."
Or this fabulous one: "I have met no one who has seen a sea on the west side of Europe. The truth is, no one has discovered if Europe is surrounded by water or not. Said Herodotus, ca. 445bc"
However, more and more of the snippets concern death and dying—who died of what, where, when. I was tempted to look up what Markson himself had died of: unknown causes in Greenwich Village in 2010.
I wonder what I will die of…
But enough about death.
Instead, let's snigger at...well I'm not sure which of these two dead authors we are meant to snigger at: "Rank vegetable growth, Rebecca West called the sentences of Henry James. One feels that if one took cuttings of them one could raise a library in the garden."
Or we could choose to be amazed that "there were 945 booksellers in Paris in 1845".
Or be further amazed that Sydney Smith, in 1819, asked the following question: "In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book?" I looked up Sydney Smith. He was an English vicar, and a very cheerful chap by all accounts. He is remembered mainly for his rhyming recipe for salad dressing.
I also paused to check the amount of US books on my goodreads shelves: 120 out of 840. I didn't count Nabokov, and I left out South America and Canada, but still, it's a much smaller number than I expected, though American Markson swells it by a few.
While looking through my book shelves to spot US titles, I spotted three books by English writer Stevie Smith and wondered if she might be a relative of above mentioned Sydney Smith since she sometimes comes across as a very cheerful chappie (chappie is a word she uses a lot). My favourite of her books is a yellow-covered book called Novel on Yellow Paper, and the yellow cover of this Markson book has been reminding me of Stevie every time the corner of my eye catches sight of it. What's more, Markson references Stevie quite a few times: "Stevie Smith's cheerfully gruesome voice, Robert Lowell called it." Elsewhere he quotes lines from her famous 'cheerfully gruesome' poem, Not Waving but Drowning.
Sometimes Author seems like he's not waving much either, sadly.
But just when I'm feeling sorry for him, he offers me a gift that feels designed for me personally: "One should always read with a pen in one's hand." My marginalia-loving hand drew a happy face beside that quote!
And another gift appeared soon after: "The word 'serendipity'. Coined by Horace Walpole, in 1754."
And then he dropped this little gem in my palm: "'Twas brillig."
'Twas indeed.
The third book in the trilogy is called The Last Novel and has an epigraph from none other than cheerful chappie, Stevie Smith: "If there wasn't death, I think you couldn't go on."
Author has morphed into Novelist in this book: "Old. Tired. Sick. Alone. Broke. All of which obviously means that this is the last book Novelist is going to write."
The poverty of writers and artists has been a theme in the four books but is given a bigger focus here. Vermeer, for example, was paying the baker's bill with paintings by the end of his life. Poet John Clare was 'mouse poor' according to a contemporary.
But in spite of all these grim snippets, Novelist remembers to amuse us plenty too: "It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing. Said Gertrude Stein."
Or this from Cyril Connolly: "Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice." Should I repeat that...
Or this from Schopenhauer, about what reading is: "Thinking with someone else's brain."
I've had the thought more than once that Markson's books are a bit like a bible for readers, and it so happens that he spends some time in this third book looking into the Bible, and observes the variations in translations of certain verses in certain editions. For example, for Psalm 91:5, the King James Bible gives this translation: "Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night."
An earlier version goes like this: "Thou shalt not nede to be afrayed for eny bugges by night."
Isn't that just wholy delicious?
And speaking of holy and delicious, Markson tells us that Charles Lamb was known to pretend surprise that people did not say grace before reading.
And that Borges' vision of Paradise was a kind of library. How about that!
And how about Novelist announcing on page 398 apropos of nothing that he threw his cat out of a fourth floor window.
But on the next page, hidden among unrelated snippets, he throws in this remark: "Novelist does not own a cat, and thus most certainly could not have thrown one out a window. Nonetheless he would lay odds that more than one hopscotching reviewer will be reading carelessly enough to never notice these two sentences, and announce that he did."
I mentally pat myself on the back for not being a hopscotching reviewer!
And I mentally pat Markson on the back for having a decent sense of humour.
Which I don't think he believed GB Shaw had. He reports Shaw as saying that Dickens having named the schoolmaster in Hard Times Mr McChoakumchild was "an insult to the serious reader".
How serious must a reader be? Not so serious that he can't laugh at the aptness of a character's name, I think...
But all the same I became a little serious by the end of this book.
And sorrowful.
But not too sorrowful not to smile at this line:
"I am quite content to go down to posterity as a scissors and paste man. Said Joyce."
And not too serious to not entertain the thought that Markson was a pretty good scissors and paste man himself!
As someone is quoted as saying on some page or other, "We can say nothing but what has been said; the composition and method is ours only..."
……………………………………
For those of you who have an unholy curiosity to know Sydney Smith's rhyming recipe for salad dressing, here it is:
Two boiled potatoes, strained through a kitchen sieve,
Softness and smoothness to the salad give;
Of mordant mustard take a single spoon—
Distrust the condiment that bites too soon;
Yet deem it not, thou man of taste, a fault,
To add a double quantity of salt.
The title sets us up for not expecting a novel, but there is, nevertheless, the skeleton of a novel hidden inside the book's 140 pages which are otherwise made up of borrowed quotes and repurposed facts, though it has to be said that the skeleton would hardly fill the end pages of the book were its sentence-bones fitted together. But if a person bothered to do that (who would do such a thing), they might figure out that the skeleton novel was about a character called Writer and his efforts to write a novel, hampered by the fact that he is more certain of what his novel isn't rather than what it is.
Little by very little, he comes to the conclusion that he, and only he, has the power to decide exactly what his novel might be shaping up to be.
As in, it could be:
—"a mural of sorts, if Writer says so"
—or "a polyphonic opera, if Writer says so"
—or "a series of cantos awaiting numbering, if Writer says so"
—or "a synthetic personal Finnegans Wake, if Writer so decides"
—or "even a novel, if Writer or Robert Rauschenberg says so."
When I came on Robert Rauschenberg’s name, I stopped short. To be honest, I stopped short frequently while reading David Markson's pages:
—sometimes to puzzle out just which author, artist, or character was being referenced: "And who are you? said he. Don't puzzle me; said I"
—sometimes to applaud a genius misquote: "Then Werther blew his silly brains out while Charlotte went on cutting bread and butter."
—sometimes in total surprise at the unexpected direction the quotes and snippets had taken, "There was a large rock near. She hurled her head at the stone, so that she broke her skull and was dead. Says the earliest version of Deirdre of the Sorrows"
—sometimes to check the origin and meaning of an obsolete word, eg: 'wanhope ', which means anguish or despair, and is hurled into the pages more than once
—sometimes to note a useful fact: "the earliest use of writing was for making lists. For commerce"
—sometimes to look up a name or an unattributed line of poetry: "Like a long-legged fly upon the stream, His mind moves upon silence" (that's from WB Yeats and I was glad I looked it up because the poem is beautiful (though I didn't copy it into the end pages as I'd done with a beautiful poem I found referenced in Markson's Reader's Block because, well..)).
Markson mostly doesn't give us any info on the literary and artistic personalities he mentions, presuming we are as well-read as he is, which is fair enough because if we are seasoned readers (and we have to be well peppered and well salted to read Markson), we should have some knowledge about all these people already, and/or a great desire to know more, which is why I stopped short so frequently.
So, as I was saying, I stopped short for artist Robert Rauschenberg, having the feeling that he might be useful for the purposes of this review—and being more than a bit partial to the "holy curiosity of enquiry" as Markson says Einstein put it. Indeed, I gave thanks to my holy curiosity of enquiry when I checked Rauschenberg’s wiki page.
Here's one of the serendipities I found: Rauschenberg, a twentieth century artist, once sent a telegram to the Iris Clert gallery in Paris which read, "This is a portrait of Iris Clert if I say so", which has to be what Markson is referencing with all his "if Writer says so" statements, basically the notion that an idea can be the artwork itself, something which perfectly describes Markson's bones-of-a-novel which is really only the idea of a novel.
What's more, Rauschenberg created much of his art out of 'found' and 'repurposed' materials exactly as Markson did in Reader's Block, as well as in the three novels collected in this volume. Rauschenberg maintained he valued the surprise for the viewer of finding things he'd collected anywhere and everywhere transformed by their new context inside an artwork. And surprise at finding odd and unusual facts and quotes is definitely a feature of Markson's work too—one I enjoyed. I never knew what he'd hurl at me next!
Incidentally, Rauschenberg and Markson were contemporaries and both lived in Greenwich village at one or another point of their lives.
The second novel in this volume is called Vanishing Point and reads like a continuation of This is Not a Novel which itself felt like a continuation of Reader's Block—although each can be read alone too. Markson says he didn't like the books being referred to as a 'tetrology'.
In Vanishing Point, Writer (formerly Reader in RB) has morphed into Author, and has begun classifying his notes for the 'idea' of a novel that was embedded in the pages of This is not a novel (which contained more than one reference to Magritte of 'ceci n'est pas une pipe' fame, though none to the 'pipe' itself ).
But much to my satisfaction, he continues to fill pages with found items, ie, odd quotes and snippets, eg: "How many things there are in the world that I do not want. Said Socrates, strolling through a marketplace in Athens."
Or this fabulous one: "I have met no one who has seen a sea on the west side of Europe. The truth is, no one has discovered if Europe is surrounded by water or not. Said Herodotus, ca. 445bc"
However, more and more of the snippets concern death and dying—who died of what, where, when. I was tempted to look up what Markson himself had died of: unknown causes in Greenwich Village in 2010.
I wonder what I will die of…
But enough about death.
Instead, let's snigger at...well I'm not sure which of these two dead authors we are meant to snigger at: "Rank vegetable growth, Rebecca West called the sentences of Henry James. One feels that if one took cuttings of them one could raise a library in the garden."
Or we could choose to be amazed that "there were 945 booksellers in Paris in 1845".
Or be further amazed that Sydney Smith, in 1819, asked the following question: "In the four quarters of the globe, who reads an American book?" I looked up Sydney Smith. He was an English vicar, and a very cheerful chap by all accounts. He is remembered mainly for his rhyming recipe for salad dressing.
I also paused to check the amount of US books on my goodreads shelves: 120 out of 840. I didn't count Nabokov, and I left out South America and Canada, but still, it's a much smaller number than I expected, though American Markson swells it by a few.
While looking through my book shelves to spot US titles, I spotted three books by English writer Stevie Smith and wondered if she might be a relative of above mentioned Sydney Smith since she sometimes comes across as a very cheerful chappie (chappie is a word she uses a lot). My favourite of her books is a yellow-covered book called Novel on Yellow Paper, and the yellow cover of this Markson book has been reminding me of Stevie every time the corner of my eye catches sight of it. What's more, Markson references Stevie quite a few times: "Stevie Smith's cheerfully gruesome voice, Robert Lowell called it." Elsewhere he quotes lines from her famous 'cheerfully gruesome' poem, Not Waving but Drowning.
Sometimes Author seems like he's not waving much either, sadly.
But just when I'm feeling sorry for him, he offers me a gift that feels designed for me personally: "One should always read with a pen in one's hand." My marginalia-loving hand drew a happy face beside that quote!
And another gift appeared soon after: "The word 'serendipity'. Coined by Horace Walpole, in 1754."
And then he dropped this little gem in my palm: "'Twas brillig."
'Twas indeed.
The third book in the trilogy is called The Last Novel and has an epigraph from none other than cheerful chappie, Stevie Smith: "If there wasn't death, I think you couldn't go on."
Author has morphed into Novelist in this book: "Old. Tired. Sick. Alone. Broke. All of which obviously means that this is the last book Novelist is going to write."
The poverty of writers and artists has been a theme in the four books but is given a bigger focus here. Vermeer, for example, was paying the baker's bill with paintings by the end of his life. Poet John Clare was 'mouse poor' according to a contemporary.
But in spite of all these grim snippets, Novelist remembers to amuse us plenty too: "It takes a lot of time to be a genius, you have to sit around so much doing nothing. Said Gertrude Stein."
Or this from Cyril Connolly: "Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice." Should I repeat that...
Or this from Schopenhauer, about what reading is: "Thinking with someone else's brain."
I've had the thought more than once that Markson's books are a bit like a bible for readers, and it so happens that he spends some time in this third book looking into the Bible, and observes the variations in translations of certain verses in certain editions. For example, for Psalm 91:5, the King James Bible gives this translation: "Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night."
An earlier version goes like this: "Thou shalt not nede to be afrayed for eny bugges by night."
Isn't that just wholy delicious?
And speaking of holy and delicious, Markson tells us that Charles Lamb was known to pretend surprise that people did not say grace before reading.
And that Borges' vision of Paradise was a kind of library. How about that!
And how about Novelist announcing on page 398 apropos of nothing that he threw his cat out of a fourth floor window.
But on the next page, hidden among unrelated snippets, he throws in this remark: "Novelist does not own a cat, and thus most certainly could not have thrown one out a window. Nonetheless he would lay odds that more than one hopscotching reviewer will be reading carelessly enough to never notice these two sentences, and announce that he did."
I mentally pat myself on the back for not being a hopscotching reviewer!
And I mentally pat Markson on the back for having a decent sense of humour.
Which I don't think he believed GB Shaw had. He reports Shaw as saying that Dickens having named the schoolmaster in Hard Times Mr McChoakumchild was "an insult to the serious reader".
How serious must a reader be? Not so serious that he can't laugh at the aptness of a character's name, I think...
But all the same I became a little serious by the end of this book.
And sorrowful.
But not too sorrowful not to smile at this line:
"I am quite content to go down to posterity as a scissors and paste man. Said Joyce."
And not too serious to not entertain the thought that Markson was a pretty good scissors and paste man himself!
As someone is quoted as saying on some page or other, "We can say nothing but what has been said; the composition and method is ours only..."
……………………………………
For those of you who have an unholy curiosity to know Sydney Smith's rhyming recipe for salad dressing, here it is:
Two boiled potatoes, strained through a kitchen sieve,
Softness and smoothness to the salad give;
Of mordant mustard take a single spoon—
Distrust the condiment that bites too soon;
Yet deem it not, thou man of taste, a fault,
To add a double quantity of salt.
Read
May 18, 2025A few years ago, I’ve read and loved Wittgenstein’s Mistress. I knew it was just the question of time before i read more work by its author. I was given the last push by Fionnuala, my wonderful and inspiring friend here. I understood David Marskon wanted his four last books published under a single cover. I guess it is because he considered these four works as a part of a whole. I was lucky to get hold of three of them under one cover and never managed to get hold of the first novel Reader’s Block. So I am missing the beginning of this journey for now. Maybe that was the reason that it took me some time to settle into This Is Not a Novel, the first work included in this book. But I've ended up having a quite unique reading experience with all three of them. Though i would admit that if someone else would try to emulate the experiment Markson did, i would not be very enthusiastic. It worked for me by the presence of the author’s personality and the circumstances of his life he tried so much not to flush in the reader's face. And this made these books so moving at the end.
I will try to describe my experience as i was turning these pages. Let’s start from This is not a novel. Markson repeated more than once within the text: Nonlinear. Discontinuous. Collage-like. An assemblage. Self-evident enough to scarcely need Writer’s say-so. Obviously it refers to the text itself and it is a quite accurate description.
The text is made of short 2-3 sentence blocks, the statements of a fact without obvious links between each other. Naturally I was trying to look for some patterns and managed to split them into three main threads: different causes of deaths of well-known people - kind of morbid and a bit obsessive; more playful and witty factoids about life of famous people and what did they think of each other (rarely a good word); and mini-meta-fictional commentary. As this mixture progresses it seems that the author’s preoccupations and the form of the text might hint on his stage of life and more evidently his stage of mind. There are also small bits describing exactly that. The narrator seems very tired. I started to strongly suspect that that author might have been seriously unwell writing it or in a rush to finish. Meta-fictional snippets negate the traditional prerequisites of a novelistic prose. The facts about life are quite witty. But the death causes have started to get on my nerves. At the end i ended up skipping them. I would see a sentence “ Dickens died..” “Mozart died..” and i would just move on to the next snippet.
After reading the half of the “not a novel” I’d finally figured what it so much reminded me off - a Twitter feed! In all its essence: obsessive, often macabre, often unkind or critical of the others; fragmentary to the level of absurd; mildly addictive and not very memorable as a whole. It is fascinating how Markson has caught this tendency of human mind to “scroll”: the book has been written well before Twitter’s time. Many snippets were familiar to me, but many contained a new information. As the text was so bitty, I’ve decided to experiment myself and check what i would remember next day after finishing the novel without looking at the book. Spoiler: not much, but some. From 150 pages of the facts, I’ve remembered the following:
-Marx daughter was translating Madam Bovary and ended up committing suicide herself.
-Jean Genet was a paid Nazi informer.
-Tolstoy was nasty about “Hamlet” and did not value Shakespeare much.
- Dickens left his wife for much younger women.
- During the last years of his life Goncharov was mad and complained Turgenev has stolen his work.
- Darwin split the books physically to be able to carry them easier or torn out the chapters he was not interested in.
I knew before reading but it has “retrieved” with the rest the next day:
-Trotsky was a lover Frida Kahlo.
-Woolf was nasty about Joyce and Ulysses.
So about ten bits out of the lot. This list is how i’ve remembered these facts, it is not quoted from the book and likely it is not in the order as they were stated in the book. Now, when i am writing it a week since finishing the book, it is quite amusing to see what i’ve remembered. It looks pretty random. I can say of course that this selection tells me something new about me or about that tangential point where my mind has touched Markson’s. But whether it is actually true, I am not sure. Though the idea is pleasant. But the exercise was fun by itself and made reading ‘not a novel” a bit less sad it would be otherwise.
After finishing the first book i was not even sure i wanted to continue. I certainly did not want to know anymore causes or death. But i’ve read the first three pages of the second instalment ‘Vanishing Point” and i knew i was in. Something has changed. The structure seemed very similar, but the tone has changed. And the factoids have been transformed as well. They’ve become a little coherent mini stories. You know the famous six words story by Hemingway: 'For sale: baby shoes, never worn.'. Markson’s stories would rival this. But he has had arguably even more constraint to play with as they are all factual. A little jewels of miniature story-telling. They could be sadly funny, in a Kafkaesque way (i cannot believe i use that name - surprisingly i do not remember him appearing in the book) like this one:
Or they could be more sarcastic:
Or plain tragic:
But these voices of long-gone people are so masterfully recreated by Markson with his curation and his unique syntax that every each of them contains some kernel of what i would be looking in a novel: a truth of being human for the lack of less pompous definition.
The atmosphere has become more lyrical as whole. The narrator who is called “The Author” in the second and “The Novelist” in the third novel, has become more resigned to his predicament of being old and lonely, less fearful and more reflexive. Beside these little stories his mind throws at him, he shares some observations about his current daily life, his lack of human contact, his stand off with his own mortality and the mortality of his friends. Those are unbearably poignant fragments. In one of them he recalls an old woman he has seen somewhere in a hospital:
In another, he tests the reader’s attention by describing a throwing his cat from the fourth floor without any reason. He later corrects himself about the whole, to the reader’s relief. But he never forgets about the constraint he imposed on himself: 'And thus on which Novelist will say more about himself only when he finds no way to evade doing so, but rarely otherwise. '. As a whole he is very successful in achieving his ultimate goal. He has produced a unique sequence of texts: ‘Novelist personal genre. For all its seeming fragmentation, nonetheless obstinately cross-referential and of cryptic interconnective syntax.’
It is an original book. On the surface, it is not designed to have an emotional impact: facts, facts, facts with a bit of theory of a novel in the mix. But it has filled me with shimmering sadness for the author, for his craft and for the old people out there alone when many of their friends are already gone. And they are left to retell themselves old stories. It has reminded me of another old man, Bernard from The Waves by Virginia Woolf:
I will try to describe my experience as i was turning these pages. Let’s start from This is not a novel. Markson repeated more than once within the text: Nonlinear. Discontinuous. Collage-like. An assemblage. Self-evident enough to scarcely need Writer’s say-so. Obviously it refers to the text itself and it is a quite accurate description.
The text is made of short 2-3 sentence blocks, the statements of a fact without obvious links between each other. Naturally I was trying to look for some patterns and managed to split them into three main threads: different causes of deaths of well-known people - kind of morbid and a bit obsessive; more playful and witty factoids about life of famous people and what did they think of each other (rarely a good word); and mini-meta-fictional commentary. As this mixture progresses it seems that the author’s preoccupations and the form of the text might hint on his stage of life and more evidently his stage of mind. There are also small bits describing exactly that. The narrator seems very tired. I started to strongly suspect that that author might have been seriously unwell writing it or in a rush to finish. Meta-fictional snippets negate the traditional prerequisites of a novelistic prose. The facts about life are quite witty. But the death causes have started to get on my nerves. At the end i ended up skipping them. I would see a sentence “ Dickens died..” “Mozart died..” and i would just move on to the next snippet.
After reading the half of the “not a novel” I’d finally figured what it so much reminded me off - a Twitter feed! In all its essence: obsessive, often macabre, often unkind or critical of the others; fragmentary to the level of absurd; mildly addictive and not very memorable as a whole. It is fascinating how Markson has caught this tendency of human mind to “scroll”: the book has been written well before Twitter’s time. Many snippets were familiar to me, but many contained a new information. As the text was so bitty, I’ve decided to experiment myself and check what i would remember next day after finishing the novel without looking at the book. Spoiler: not much, but some. From 150 pages of the facts, I’ve remembered the following:
-Marx daughter was translating Madam Bovary and ended up committing suicide herself.
-Jean Genet was a paid Nazi informer.
-Tolstoy was nasty about “Hamlet” and did not value Shakespeare much.
- Dickens left his wife for much younger women.
- During the last years of his life Goncharov was mad and complained Turgenev has stolen his work.
- Darwin split the books physically to be able to carry them easier or torn out the chapters he was not interested in.
I knew before reading but it has “retrieved” with the rest the next day:
-Trotsky was a lover Frida Kahlo.
-Woolf was nasty about Joyce and Ulysses.
So about ten bits out of the lot. This list is how i’ve remembered these facts, it is not quoted from the book and likely it is not in the order as they were stated in the book. Now, when i am writing it a week since finishing the book, it is quite amusing to see what i’ve remembered. It looks pretty random. I can say of course that this selection tells me something new about me or about that tangential point where my mind has touched Markson’s. But whether it is actually true, I am not sure. Though the idea is pleasant. But the exercise was fun by itself and made reading ‘not a novel” a bit less sad it would be otherwise.
After finishing the first book i was not even sure i wanted to continue. I certainly did not want to know anymore causes or death. But i’ve read the first three pages of the second instalment ‘Vanishing Point” and i knew i was in. Something has changed. The structure seemed very similar, but the tone has changed. And the factoids have been transformed as well. They’ve become a little coherent mini stories. You know the famous six words story by Hemingway: 'For sale: baby shoes, never worn.'. Markson’s stories would rival this. But he has had arguably even more constraint to play with as they are all factual. A little jewels of miniature story-telling. They could be sadly funny, in a Kafkaesque way (i cannot believe i use that name - surprisingly i do not remember him appearing in the book) like this one:
They said I was mad, and i said. they were mad, and, damn them, they outvoted me. Said Dryden’s sometime collaborator Nathaniel Lee, upon being confined to Bedlam.
Or they could be more sarcastic:
Hemingway made a display of announcing to friends how frequently he bedded his wives. Someone asked Mary Hemingway about this later on. If only, Mary said.
Or plain tragic:
I am hungry. I am cold. When I grow up I want to be a Germa, and. then I shall no longer be hungry and cold.
Wrote a Jewish youngster in the Warsaw Ghetto.
But these voices of long-gone people are so masterfully recreated by Markson with his curation and his unique syntax that every each of them contains some kernel of what i would be looking in a novel: a truth of being human for the lack of less pompous definition.
The atmosphere has become more lyrical as whole. The narrator who is called “The Author” in the second and “The Novelist” in the third novel, has become more resigned to his predicament of being old and lonely, less fearful and more reflexive. Beside these little stories his mind throws at him, he shares some observations about his current daily life, his lack of human contact, his stand off with his own mortality and the mortality of his friends. Those are unbearably poignant fragments. In one of them he recalls an old woman he has seen somewhere in a hospital:
Persistently lingering, why? - that image of that woman washing her face i a toilet bowl. And when once she was young and delicate and fair?
In another, he tests the reader’s attention by describing a throwing his cat from the fourth floor without any reason. He later corrects himself about the whole, to the reader’s relief. But he never forgets about the constraint he imposed on himself: 'And thus on which Novelist will say more about himself only when he finds no way to evade doing so, but rarely otherwise. '. As a whole he is very successful in achieving his ultimate goal. He has produced a unique sequence of texts: ‘Novelist personal genre. For all its seeming fragmentation, nonetheless obstinately cross-referential and of cryptic interconnective syntax.’
It is an original book. On the surface, it is not designed to have an emotional impact: facts, facts, facts with a bit of theory of a novel in the mix. But it has filled me with shimmering sadness for the author, for his craft and for the old people out there alone when many of their friends are already gone. And they are left to retell themselves old stories. It has reminded me of another old man, Bernard from The Waves by Virginia Woolf:
I have made up thousands of stories; I have filled innumerable notebooks with phrases to be used when I have found the true story, the one story to which all these phrases refer. But I have never yet found that story. And I begin to ask, Are there stories?
September 2, 2017
This volume contains three of David Markson’s final four works, the other being Reader’s Block. Together, they form a set of four related works, starting with Reader's Block and followed by the three gathered here into a single collection.
I should warn anyone who reads this that it will gradually turn into something rather long as my intention is to read each work and review it rather than read all three and review them as a whole. I don’t intend to read them one after the other, either: there will be breaks while I read other books, so it will take some time for this to be a complete review of all three works.
The four books together form, in my view, a masterpiece of invention unlike anything else you will read. Even having read all four, it is still not clear to me how someone can write a book that consists simply of facts, quotations and musings and yet somehow create something very moving and incredibly sad. And, at least for me, beautiful.
Here are some thoughts on each of the three books in this collection. My thoughts on Reader's Block are here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
THIS IS NOT A NOVEL
In Reader’s Block, the protagonist was Reader. In This Is Not A Novel, he is Writer. In the subsequent works, he will become Author and then Novelist. I believe he is the same person all the way through, though. But there’s a logical progression from Reader through Writer to Author and then to Novelist. You can get a hint of what Markson is driving at by his protagonist’s labels.
You might have noticed that I am referring to “works” rather than “novels”. This is because these cannot really be described as novels in any conventional sense of the word. They are collections of facts, statements and musings, often completely unrelated to one another. This one begins in the same style as Reader’s Block and throws facts at the reader. But, mixed in with them this time we start to see Writer thinking about what he is writing. I extracted a number of quotes out of the melange of phrases in the first few pages, so the following quotes actually require several pages in the book and are separated by a lot of other information.
A novel with no intimation of story whatsoever, Writer would like to contrive. And with no characters. None.
Plotless. Characterless.
Yet seducing the reader into turning pages nonetheless.
Actionless, Writer wants it. Which is to say, with no sequence of events. Which is to say, with no indicated passage of time. Then again, getting somewhere in spite of this.
Even with a note of sadness at the end.
A novel with no setting. With no so-called furniture. Ergo meaning finally without descriptions.
A novel with no overriding central motivations, Writer wants. Hence with no conflicts and/or confrontations, similarly.
With no social themes, i.e., no picture of society. No depiction of contemporary manners and/or morals. Categorically, with no politics.
A novel entirely without symbols.
Ultimately, a work of art without even a subject, Writer wants.
Is Writer, thinking he can bring off what he has in mind? And anticipating that he will have any readers?
There are three predominating themes to the phrases thrown, sometimes seemingly at random (although I very much doubt that is the case), at the page:
1. Death - the cause of death of many people is documented
2. Put downs - Markson quotes many artistic types saying derogatory things about other artistic types
3. Questions - some meaningful, some nonsense
The first category is probably self-explanatory. We are simply told how a well-known person died.
Some of the put downs and insults in the second section are extremely clever and funny.
There are so few people who know how to make art. —Julian Schnabel.
One less than he thinks. —Robert Hughes.
And I would dearly love to know who wrote this and to whom:
Dear Sir: I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. Your review is before me. Shortly it will be behind me.
And the questions include literary posers such as
How frequently was Anon. a woman?
What is Hamlet reading, in Act II Scene ii, when Polonius inquires and Hamlet says Words, words, words?
And nonsense questions such as
What time was it forty-five minutes before the beginning of time?
It’s a meditation on death, but also on illness and on art that is strangely compulsive reading given that there is no plot, no characters, no anything really. It’s remarkable that a kind of atmosphere develops in your mind as you read.
Or, perhaps, it IS a novel. Writing at popmatters.com, David Heckman says:
And yet Markson’s work is a novel in more ways than one. Not only is its novelty interesting and refreshing, but it manages to satisfy many of the processes that readers associate with novel-reading. The style and subject matter of the particular bits of information is so interesting and readable that Markson’s text is truly a “page-turner.” Like more conventional novels, Markson’s is fun (and even easy) to read. As with many popular forms or genres, which promise a certain amount of predictability, This Is Not a Novel is extremely predictable in that there is no building of tension or hope of climax since there are no sections that are more significant than any other.
Like other novelists before him, Markson ultimately tells a very human and touching story, although in a different way. For all of his frankness, the “Writer” becomes a familiar voice and Markson’s style becomes like an old friend. The stories become “personal” as the historical figures become more like regular people. In its totality, This Is Not a Novel presents an overarching tale of the sadness and absurdity of our own mortality.
This Is Not a Novel might not be for everyone, but for people who write or those who enjoy reading experimental works, Markson’s novel is truly a pleasure. At times, it may seem like the “Writer” is playing a joke on the reader, and this may be so, but after all, what is a novel but an elaborately crafted deception? As D.H. Lawrence once commented, the artist is a “damned liar”—which makes me smile at Markson’s biggest lie of all: “This Is Not a Novel.”
But then again, as Writer says towards the end of the book
Or was it possibly nothing more than a fundamentally recognizable genre all the while, no matter what Writer averred? Nothing more or less than a read? Simply an unconventional, generally melancholy though sometimes even playful now-ending read? About an old man’s preoccupations.
This is not a novel that everyone will want to read. But, as Heckman says, those who enjoy the experimental side of literature can take great pleasure in an entertaining, though-provoking and, ultimately, sad story that develops despite the author’s best intentions! There isn’t a plot, but I felt I got to know Writer and felt for him. Personally, I was gripped all the way through and loved every page. A provisional 5 star rating after one book of the three is completed.
VANISHING POINT
First, we had Reader (in Reader’ Block) who was thinking about writing a novel about someone called Protagonist. He was repeatedly interrupted by thoughts of people who had died (he recorded a lot of suicides, in particular) or who were anti-Semites. Then, in This Is Not A Novel, we met Writer (I’m sure Reader and Writer are the same person). Writer was thinking about how he wanted his book to develop (I am assuming male because Markson was male): he was aiming for a book that was, in essence, empty yet compelling (which Markson achieved in This Is Not A Novel). Writer was preoccupied with death, too, and noted a lot of causes of death of famous people.
Now, in Vanishing Point, the progression continues and we meet Author. Author has a lot of material:
Author has finally started to put his notes into manuscript form.
Author had been scribbling the notes on three-by-five-inch index cards. They now come close to filling two shoebox tops taped together end to end.
This is, in fact, how Markson prepared the material for his books over a period of many years of collecting quotes and facts that he organised into a sequence that gave the effect he was aiming for.
However,
Actually, Author could have begun to type some weeks ago. For whatever reason, he’s been procrastinating.
And, once again, we head into a book of facts, quotes and questions that seem to represent the random but associated thoughts of a mind that cannot settle.
As with previous books, there are themes that develop:
1. The creative process and time taken to create works of art
2. The role of critics
3. The impact of the arts
4. Places where people died
So, we read things like this about the creative process:
Was it Menander who announced that his new play was finished—all he had to do was write it?
And
Art is not truth. Art is a lie that enables us to recognize truth. Said Picasso.
And this on the progression of art:
What Palestrina would have made of a Stockhausen score. What Giotto would make of a Gerhard Richter canvas.
Then this (one of many examples) about the time taken to create works of art
Dostoievsky wrote The Gambler in sixteen days. Stephen Crane wrote The Red Badge of Courage in ten. At twenty-one. Donizetti wrote L’Elisir d’Amore in a week.
Markson is consistently damning about critics:
A critic is a man who knows the way but can’t drive the car. Said Kenneth Tynan.
This book didn’t quite have the emotional impact of the previous two. I don’t know if that is because I have become used to the style now. However, there is a rush in the last few pages that does somehow manage to build an emotional conclusion to the book as Author seems to see the end coming.
These books are very experimental and I appreciate that not everyone will want to read them. However, I do hope that people will be interested enough to at least make a start on them and see how they react. The overall impact, despite lack of plot, character, timeline or anything else you might expect in a novel, is really very powerful.
THE LAST NOVEL
The final instalment in Markson’s quartet is very consciously self-aware. I think all the books are, really, but this one makes it very obvious. Early on we read two quotes:
Old. Tired. Sick. Alone. Broke. All of which obviously means that this is the last book Novelist is going to write.
His last book. All of which also then gives Novelist carte blanche to do anything here he damned well pleases. Which is to say, writing in his own personal genre, as it were.
Followed by a reprise of a couple of phrases that have echoed through all the books:
Nonlinear. Discontinuous. Collage-like. An assemblage.
A novel of intellectual reference and allusion, so to speak minus much of the novel.
And so, for the final time, we eavesdrop on the thoughts (that’s what it feels to me like we are doing) of a person who has been Reader, Writer, Author and now Novelist. There is still much about death, with an additional focus in this novel on where people died.
Aspen, Colorado, Mina Loy died in.
Gravesend, on the Thames, Pocahontas died in.
And Novelist is concerned about how his previous books have been received:
Reviewers who protest that Novelist has lately appeared to be writing the same book over and over. Like their grandly perspicacious uncles — who groused that Monet had done those damnable water lilies nine dozen times already also.
In this book, some of the cross-references back to previous statements are more obvious. So we read
For no reason whatsoever, Novelist has just flung his cat out one of his four-flights-up front windows.
Then, a few pages later,
Novelist does not own a cat, and thus most certainly could not have thrown one out a window. Nonetheless he would lay odds that more than one hopscotching reviewer will be reading carelessly enough here to never notice these two sentences and announce that he did so.
The novel, like the three that precede it, develops into a meditation on death. Here it seems that Novelist is looking back at his work and saying he’s done his best. There will be no more.
And it was Markson’s final novel.
I should warn anyone who reads this that it will gradually turn into something rather long as my intention is to read each work and review it rather than read all three and review them as a whole. I don’t intend to read them one after the other, either: there will be breaks while I read other books, so it will take some time for this to be a complete review of all three works.
The four books together form, in my view, a masterpiece of invention unlike anything else you will read. Even having read all four, it is still not clear to me how someone can write a book that consists simply of facts, quotations and musings and yet somehow create something very moving and incredibly sad. And, at least for me, beautiful.
Here are some thoughts on each of the three books in this collection. My thoughts on Reader's Block are here: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
THIS IS NOT A NOVEL
In Reader’s Block, the protagonist was Reader. In This Is Not A Novel, he is Writer. In the subsequent works, he will become Author and then Novelist. I believe he is the same person all the way through, though. But there’s a logical progression from Reader through Writer to Author and then to Novelist. You can get a hint of what Markson is driving at by his protagonist’s labels.
You might have noticed that I am referring to “works” rather than “novels”. This is because these cannot really be described as novels in any conventional sense of the word. They are collections of facts, statements and musings, often completely unrelated to one another. This one begins in the same style as Reader’s Block and throws facts at the reader. But, mixed in with them this time we start to see Writer thinking about what he is writing. I extracted a number of quotes out of the melange of phrases in the first few pages, so the following quotes actually require several pages in the book and are separated by a lot of other information.
A novel with no intimation of story whatsoever, Writer would like to contrive. And with no characters. None.
Plotless. Characterless.
Yet seducing the reader into turning pages nonetheless.
Actionless, Writer wants it. Which is to say, with no sequence of events. Which is to say, with no indicated passage of time. Then again, getting somewhere in spite of this.
Even with a note of sadness at the end.
A novel with no setting. With no so-called furniture. Ergo meaning finally without descriptions.
A novel with no overriding central motivations, Writer wants. Hence with no conflicts and/or confrontations, similarly.
With no social themes, i.e., no picture of society. No depiction of contemporary manners and/or morals. Categorically, with no politics.
A novel entirely without symbols.
Ultimately, a work of art without even a subject, Writer wants.
Is Writer, thinking he can bring off what he has in mind? And anticipating that he will have any readers?
There are three predominating themes to the phrases thrown, sometimes seemingly at random (although I very much doubt that is the case), at the page:
1. Death - the cause of death of many people is documented
2. Put downs - Markson quotes many artistic types saying derogatory things about other artistic types
3. Questions - some meaningful, some nonsense
The first category is probably self-explanatory. We are simply told how a well-known person died.
Some of the put downs and insults in the second section are extremely clever and funny.
There are so few people who know how to make art. —Julian Schnabel.
One less than he thinks. —Robert Hughes.
And I would dearly love to know who wrote this and to whom:
Dear Sir: I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. Your review is before me. Shortly it will be behind me.
And the questions include literary posers such as
How frequently was Anon. a woman?
What is Hamlet reading, in Act II Scene ii, when Polonius inquires and Hamlet says Words, words, words?
And nonsense questions such as
What time was it forty-five minutes before the beginning of time?
It’s a meditation on death, but also on illness and on art that is strangely compulsive reading given that there is no plot, no characters, no anything really. It’s remarkable that a kind of atmosphere develops in your mind as you read.
Or, perhaps, it IS a novel. Writing at popmatters.com, David Heckman says:
And yet Markson’s work is a novel in more ways than one. Not only is its novelty interesting and refreshing, but it manages to satisfy many of the processes that readers associate with novel-reading. The style and subject matter of the particular bits of information is so interesting and readable that Markson’s text is truly a “page-turner.” Like more conventional novels, Markson’s is fun (and even easy) to read. As with many popular forms or genres, which promise a certain amount of predictability, This Is Not a Novel is extremely predictable in that there is no building of tension or hope of climax since there are no sections that are more significant than any other.
Like other novelists before him, Markson ultimately tells a very human and touching story, although in a different way. For all of his frankness, the “Writer” becomes a familiar voice and Markson’s style becomes like an old friend. The stories become “personal” as the historical figures become more like regular people. In its totality, This Is Not a Novel presents an overarching tale of the sadness and absurdity of our own mortality.
This Is Not a Novel might not be for everyone, but for people who write or those who enjoy reading experimental works, Markson’s novel is truly a pleasure. At times, it may seem like the “Writer” is playing a joke on the reader, and this may be so, but after all, what is a novel but an elaborately crafted deception? As D.H. Lawrence once commented, the artist is a “damned liar”—which makes me smile at Markson’s biggest lie of all: “This Is Not a Novel.”
But then again, as Writer says towards the end of the book
Or was it possibly nothing more than a fundamentally recognizable genre all the while, no matter what Writer averred? Nothing more or less than a read? Simply an unconventional, generally melancholy though sometimes even playful now-ending read? About an old man’s preoccupations.
This is not a novel that everyone will want to read. But, as Heckman says, those who enjoy the experimental side of literature can take great pleasure in an entertaining, though-provoking and, ultimately, sad story that develops despite the author’s best intentions! There isn’t a plot, but I felt I got to know Writer and felt for him. Personally, I was gripped all the way through and loved every page. A provisional 5 star rating after one book of the three is completed.
VANISHING POINT
First, we had Reader (in Reader’ Block) who was thinking about writing a novel about someone called Protagonist. He was repeatedly interrupted by thoughts of people who had died (he recorded a lot of suicides, in particular) or who were anti-Semites. Then, in This Is Not A Novel, we met Writer (I’m sure Reader and Writer are the same person). Writer was thinking about how he wanted his book to develop (I am assuming male because Markson was male): he was aiming for a book that was, in essence, empty yet compelling (which Markson achieved in This Is Not A Novel). Writer was preoccupied with death, too, and noted a lot of causes of death of famous people.
Now, in Vanishing Point, the progression continues and we meet Author. Author has a lot of material:
Author has finally started to put his notes into manuscript form.
Author had been scribbling the notes on three-by-five-inch index cards. They now come close to filling two shoebox tops taped together end to end.
This is, in fact, how Markson prepared the material for his books over a period of many years of collecting quotes and facts that he organised into a sequence that gave the effect he was aiming for.
However,
Actually, Author could have begun to type some weeks ago. For whatever reason, he’s been procrastinating.
And, once again, we head into a book of facts, quotes and questions that seem to represent the random but associated thoughts of a mind that cannot settle.
As with previous books, there are themes that develop:
1. The creative process and time taken to create works of art
2. The role of critics
3. The impact of the arts
4. Places where people died
So, we read things like this about the creative process:
Was it Menander who announced that his new play was finished—all he had to do was write it?
And
Art is not truth. Art is a lie that enables us to recognize truth. Said Picasso.
And this on the progression of art:
What Palestrina would have made of a Stockhausen score. What Giotto would make of a Gerhard Richter canvas.
Then this (one of many examples) about the time taken to create works of art
Dostoievsky wrote The Gambler in sixteen days. Stephen Crane wrote The Red Badge of Courage in ten. At twenty-one. Donizetti wrote L’Elisir d’Amore in a week.
Markson is consistently damning about critics:
A critic is a man who knows the way but can’t drive the car. Said Kenneth Tynan.
This book didn’t quite have the emotional impact of the previous two. I don’t know if that is because I have become used to the style now. However, there is a rush in the last few pages that does somehow manage to build an emotional conclusion to the book as Author seems to see the end coming.
These books are very experimental and I appreciate that not everyone will want to read them. However, I do hope that people will be interested enough to at least make a start on them and see how they react. The overall impact, despite lack of plot, character, timeline or anything else you might expect in a novel, is really very powerful.
THE LAST NOVEL
The final instalment in Markson’s quartet is very consciously self-aware. I think all the books are, really, but this one makes it very obvious. Early on we read two quotes:
Old. Tired. Sick. Alone. Broke. All of which obviously means that this is the last book Novelist is going to write.
His last book. All of which also then gives Novelist carte blanche to do anything here he damned well pleases. Which is to say, writing in his own personal genre, as it were.
Followed by a reprise of a couple of phrases that have echoed through all the books:
Nonlinear. Discontinuous. Collage-like. An assemblage.
A novel of intellectual reference and allusion, so to speak minus much of the novel.
And so, for the final time, we eavesdrop on the thoughts (that’s what it feels to me like we are doing) of a person who has been Reader, Writer, Author and now Novelist. There is still much about death, with an additional focus in this novel on where people died.
Aspen, Colorado, Mina Loy died in.
Gravesend, on the Thames, Pocahontas died in.
And Novelist is concerned about how his previous books have been received:
Reviewers who protest that Novelist has lately appeared to be writing the same book over and over. Like their grandly perspicacious uncles — who groused that Monet had done those damnable water lilies nine dozen times already also.
In this book, some of the cross-references back to previous statements are more obvious. So we read
For no reason whatsoever, Novelist has just flung his cat out one of his four-flights-up front windows.
Then, a few pages later,
Novelist does not own a cat, and thus most certainly could not have thrown one out a window. Nonetheless he would lay odds that more than one hopscotching reviewer will be reading carelessly enough here to never notice these two sentences and announce that he did so.
The novel, like the three that precede it, develops into a meditation on death. Here it seems that Novelist is looking back at his work and saying he’s done his best. There will be no more.
And it was Markson’s final novel.
February 19, 2019
That was very good and touching. A writer/author/novelist coming to terms with aging and thinking of death
But most definitely not maudlin and with many touches of humour.
I did find myself furiously Googling references, mostly opera singers and baseball players
But most definitely not maudlin and with many touches of humour.
I did find myself furiously Googling references, mostly opera singers and baseball players
June 5, 2023
Not going to write anything on this great book, a collection of three novels, because some of the reviews here have been very comprehensive and said all that I thought of. It took me some time to finish reading it, with gaps between. A collection which one can return to repeatedly. Fascinating structure, respects the readers intellect.
May 2, 2019
Ο Μέγιστος David Markson πήγε τη λογοτεχνία του θραύσματος έναν αιώνα μπροστά! Αδημονώ να τον μεταφράσω!
March 1, 2019
Wondering if there is any viable way to convince critics never to use the word tetralogy without also adding that each volume can be readily read by itself?
Readily read?
Readily read?
Read
August 5, 2022Experimental, interesting, not like anything I've ever read before. I want to read more of his work.
March 3, 2018
Superlative. I give an extended consideration of the trilogy towards the end of my Booktube video on the post-modern novel in America.
https://youtu.be/B0Dy1xSj6i0
https://youtu.be/B0Dy1xSj6i0
October 7, 2021
прекрасна у своїй недосконалості збірка: Марксон писав останню тетралогію як цілісність, а у цій збірці зібрали лише три останні романи. чому? warum? що він Гекубі, що вона йому...
разом вони роблять сильніше враження саме у повторах, чи то пак лейтмотивах: смерть, останні дні та місця, сумні цитати про критиків і несправедливість світу, про неграмотність близьких і незаконнонароджених дітей, про красу світу і його миттєвість.
разом вони роблять сильніше враження саме у повторах, чи то пак лейтмотивах: смерть, останні дні та місця, сумні цитати про критиків і несправедливість світу, про неграмотність близьких і незаконнонароджених дітей, про красу світу і його миттєвість.
May 2, 2016
This was weirdly the most calming book I've read in forever. Really makes you "take the long view" as annoying people often say.
January 25, 2018
A fascinating compendium of facts and anecdotes, through which the author himself sometimes peeps through...
June 28, 2016
Really loved these three novels. (Or not-novels.)
February 28, 2026
Timor mortis conturbat me.A triptych of novels that felt adjacent to Beckett's Trilogy to me, although they don't quite hit the same heights—though that's perhaps an unfair comparison. Beckett progressively strips away elements of the "novel", and by The Unnameable all exteriority is removed, leaving only the Self. By contrast, in his triptych Markson reveals the Self through a series of seemingly disconnected anecdotes from art and history; clear themes of mortality and artistic legacy emerge. I found The Last Novel to be the most uneven, in part because Markson's—or at least the Novelist's—presence was most directly asserted, which felt like it undermined the experimental conceit of the triptych as a whole. I also felt a sense of timelessness was hurt by some anecdotes that immediately dated the novels to the early 2000s for me—specifically, the references to 9/11 and several of the anecdotes about Islam. Overall, though, it was a very engaging, mordantly funny collection of experimental novels.
Read
June 3, 2019Perhaps the most important piece of the book lies in the last line, “Farewell and be kind." It is a reminder to be gentle with each other and stay true to ourselves and the world around us. This is the end of the conversation between Reader and Writer. However, the impact on the reader, the heaviness and importance of the final line, is reduced with the new edition of the book. The new edition of the book is now combined with two other stories that follow the same style. And though it is interesting to have a volume of the work, does it not remove the impact of the finality of death in the final lines of This Is Not A Novel?
For more visit: www.ampspoetry.com
For more visit: www.ampspoetry.com
September 10, 2021
This was an interesting and thoughtful experiment in form that was kind of nauseating to read all at once. Markson is a writer whose spare, terse style of collected anecdotes and allusions shaped into a semi-coherent narrative leaves the reader thinking about the core tenets of this work, namely topics such as the ordinariness of celebrated authors, the similarities in death between figures, the connections between literary and societal development, etc.
It's an interesting experiment that when collected in three volumes is exhausting to read.
It's an interesting experiment that when collected in three volumes is exhausting to read.
November 15, 2025
Factoid gems on every page:
"On radio, the opening lines of Verlaine's Chanson d'automne:
Being the signal to the European underground that the D-Day invasion was underway."
"Eleven of Ernest Rutherford's students became winners of the Nobel Prize."
"Wondering when the last day may have passed-anywhere in the world-during which someone did not die in an act of religious-inspired terrorism."
"Well past fifty, Tolstoy began an intensive study of Hebrew with a Moscow rabbi---not very many years after having devoted similar concentration to mastering Greek"
"On radio, the opening lines of Verlaine's Chanson d'automne:
Being the signal to the European underground that the D-Day invasion was underway."
"Eleven of Ernest Rutherford's students became winners of the Nobel Prize."
"Wondering when the last day may have passed-anywhere in the world-during which someone did not die in an act of religious-inspired terrorism."
"Well past fifty, Tolstoy began an intensive study of Hebrew with a Moscow rabbi---not very many years after having devoted similar concentration to mastering Greek"
June 3, 2025
Bu çok acayip romana aylardır satışta olduğu halde ilk yorumu yapmak durumu da pek çok fikir verir bize. Selçuk Altun ile Stephen Fry liderliğindeki QI ekibinin ortak bir çalışmasıymış gibi. Merhum yazarın ülkemizde yayımlanan ilk romanını da okuyacağım. Girişte bir yerde çok doğru bir tespit var: "Bu kadar zor okunduğu halde sürükleyici." Romansı kurmaca-dışı, evet, akıp giden bir hikaye beklemeyin. Her yerinden su fışkıran, her yerinden de su dolan bir koca leğen.
July 9, 2022
some touching and tragic lines intervening in a catalogue of facts (a truly Wittgensteinian novel), though the three novels really just feel like one long novel. the world began without man and will likely end without man as well
May 18, 2021
Markson invented a form. What have you done?
May 12, 2025
A great concept; refreshing, fascinating, overwhelming, tiring, labourious, in that order.
November 4, 2025
When fiction becomes this unconventional for the author making the book work is about as hard as tight rope walking across skyscrapers. Here though Markson succeeds.
June 4, 2019
What a mendaciously addictive literary triptych is this! My word (my world). And to state that it grabs and holds in a manner that would seem to run entirely counter to what might be expected based on exposure to a basic explanation concerning the nature of the project, should almost certainly go without saying. Three novels involving facts about artists and thinkers (writer / author /novelist periodically insists that they are "cross-referential," and oh boy they sure are), unattributed (often) epigrams, and self-reflexive musings by the writer (Markson as Foucault-school "author-function"?) concerning the curious nature of his project and what compels it. An extraordinary amount of readerly pleasure it to be had here. Certainly for this particular reader. I devoured this thing w/ consummate immodesty! The form seems simple, but the sentences themselves are often dappled w/ tremendous finesse, and the project continually comes into focus as each of the three "novels" plateaus w/ great profundity and high spirit. It is about death. And it is about being a small voice inside a gigantic history which is itself but a tiny quantum speck. So heavy. But, my Lord, so light!
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