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Notecard Quartet
Esto no es una novela
This experimental work is an enthralling amalgamation of anecdotes, aphorisms, and quotations from writers and artists, interspersed with self-reflexive comments by the Writer who has assembled them. As the title implies, this is certainly not a novel -- not in the general sense of the term. And yet a reader who follows the flow will gradually notice certain novelistic conventions insinuating themselves. Writer -- as the narrator refers to himself -- is tired of inventing characters and subjecting them to the rigors of plot development. Instead, historical personages from Dickens to Beethoven recur throughout the book: They re born, create, speak fondly or acidly of their own work and the work of others, and then die. (Death, in fact, is a major concern of Writer.) Works of art interlock and interrelate; diary entries, attributions, and critical comments jostle for position. But what at first appear to be random bits of historical trivia ultimately come together with a narrative logic: a beginning, middle, and end. So while Markson has jettisoned the standard conflict-and-resolution pattern of a novel, he nevertheless fashions a literary journey that gets somewhere. Indeed, the book s conclusion will come as an intensely moving surprise to those who reach it.
Does Writer even exist in a book without characters? the narrator wonders. Passing through a period of aging and self-doubt, Writer looks deeply inside himself over the course of the book and worries about his very purpose. The real question hovering in the margins of this beguiling work is, Why do I write? Many an artist suffers under the burdens of posterity, the sinking feeling that words and works will fade with the passage of time. Eventually, though, this particular Writer answers in a qualified affirmative, for he realizes himself to be the main character in his own life. That which is not a novel, he implies, is life itself; creating art is what the artist does to live. In the end, out of a shared sense of mortality and its frailties and beauties, we can only agree. (Jonathan Cook)
Does Writer even exist in a book without characters? the narrator wonders. Passing through a period of aging and self-doubt, Writer looks deeply inside himself over the course of the book and worries about his very purpose. The real question hovering in the margins of this beguiling work is, Why do I write? Many an artist suffers under the burdens of posterity, the sinking feeling that words and works will fade with the passage of time. Eventually, though, this particular Writer answers in a qualified affirmative, for he realizes himself to be the main character in his own life. That which is not a novel, he implies, is life itself; creating art is what the artist does to live. In the end, out of a shared sense of mortality and its frailties and beauties, we can only agree. (Jonathan Cook)
216 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2001
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3602 people want to read
About the author
David Markson
24 books349 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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Displaying 1 - 30 of 192 reviews
August 30, 2018
What kind of a novel may This Is Not a Novel novel be?
And David Markson brilliantly fulfils all his promises and threats…
This Is Not a Novel is all about death and a wee bit about life that precedes death…
Reminiscences, references, allusions, citations, comparisons: those are all that David Markson needs to write a great book. The most important thing for him is just to sequence them in the proper order.
It’s what literature and arts are all about: we observe the suffering and agony of fictitious personages and after that the surrounding reality seems to be much sweeter… It is sad.
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.
And David Markson brilliantly fulfils all his promises and threats…
This Is Not a Novel is all about death and a wee bit about life that precedes death…
Catullus once wrote a poem criticizing Caesar.
And was invited to dinner.
Osip Mandelstam once wrote a poem criticizing Stalin.
And died in the gulag.
Eight people appeared at Robert Musil’s funeral.
F. Scott Fitzgerald died of a sequence of heart attacks.
His most recent royalty statement showed seven copies of The Great Gatsby sold during the preceding six months.
Reminiscences, references, allusions, citations, comparisons: those are all that David Markson needs to write a great book. The most important thing for him is just to sequence them in the proper order.
One of the ennobling delights of Paradise, as promised by Thomas Aquinas:
Viewing the condemned as they are tortured and broiled below.
It’s what literature and arts are all about: we observe the suffering and agony of fictitious personages and after that the surrounding reality seems to be much sweeter… It is sad.
August 25, 2013
Reviewer is a raging anti-semite.
Reviews are not literature, Lorrie Moore said to Manny Rayner.
Culture for college dropouts, Steve said of bizarro fiction.
Moriemur die mercurii.
The mark of the man is determined by the squareness of his beard. Mike Puma.
What a great reviewer dies in me.
David Markson died after having both lung and prostate cancer.
All squall and no soul, remarked Ian Graye of Bob Dylan.
Herman Wouk published a novel at 97 years old. His wife died in 2011.
Paul Bryant is a vicious anti-semite.
Gore Vidal died after complications with pneumonia.
Derring-don’t for desperate deconstructionists. Said Scribble Orca of Christine Brooke-Rose.
Reviewer tries new review method. One with lies, slander, and trivia.
Charles Dickens’s sons were feckless and unambitious.
Kurt Vonnegut survived the Dresden bombing. He later invested in a firm that made napalm.
Oscar Wilde read all the books in the Reading prison library several times.
Untalented. Alexander Theroux on Lou Reed.
The unintelligible, verbose, and smirking prose of Thomas Pynchon.
Gilbert Adair was afraid of going blind like his father. After a stroke, he went partially blind. He died of a brain haemorrhage.
A boil-squeezing wastrel, remarked Nathan Gaddis of William Vollmann.
Malcolm Lowry once drank a bottle of aftershave while staying with David Markson.
Gilbert Sorrentino died of lung cancer.
And so on.
Reviewer senses his own failure.
And dies.
Reviews are not literature, Lorrie Moore said to Manny Rayner.
Culture for college dropouts, Steve said of bizarro fiction.
Moriemur die mercurii.
The mark of the man is determined by the squareness of his beard. Mike Puma.
What a great reviewer dies in me.
David Markson died after having both lung and prostate cancer.
All squall and no soul, remarked Ian Graye of Bob Dylan.
Herman Wouk published a novel at 97 years old. His wife died in 2011.
Paul Bryant is a vicious anti-semite.
Gore Vidal died after complications with pneumonia.
Derring-don’t for desperate deconstructionists. Said Scribble Orca of Christine Brooke-Rose.
Reviewer tries new review method. One with lies, slander, and trivia.
Charles Dickens’s sons were feckless and unambitious.
Kurt Vonnegut survived the Dresden bombing. He later invested in a firm that made napalm.
Oscar Wilde read all the books in the Reading prison library several times.
Untalented. Alexander Theroux on Lou Reed.
The unintelligible, verbose, and smirking prose of Thomas Pynchon.
Gilbert Adair was afraid of going blind like his father. After a stroke, he went partially blind. He died of a brain haemorrhage.
A boil-squeezing wastrel, remarked Nathan Gaddis of William Vollmann.
Malcolm Lowry once drank a bottle of aftershave while staying with David Markson.
Gilbert Sorrentino died of lung cancer.
And so on.
Reviewer senses his own failure.
And dies.
October 8, 2023
https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2023...
(Recomiendo leer primero la reseña de La soledad del lector antes de llegar hasta aquí)
"El Escritor a veces habla solo.
Cómo hacía Yeats
Cómo hacía Yeats incluso caminando por las calles de Dublín.
Loco como la bruma y la nieve.
Siendo el hecho de que se siente o hable solo no más que la renovada verificación de que el Escritor existe.”
[…]
"Es difícil hallar esos lugares hoy en día, y si lo hicieras no te serviría de mucho, porque allí no vive nadie .
Dijo Estrabón del pasado perdido."
Este es el segundo libro perteneciente a la tetralogía de David Markson en torno al arte y su creación, y aunque se puede leer perfectamente como obra independiente, si venimos de La soledad del lector entenderemos cuál es exactamente el camino al que nos quiere ir conduciendo David Markson. Enigmática y hechizante en su discurrir, al igual que la primera de la serie, la complicidad que Markson ya ha establecido con el lector en el primer libro de la serie, le allanará el camino a la hora de establecer las conexiones.
"Tengo que usar palabras para hablar contigo."
“Pero ve, y si escuchas, ella te hablará."
Un momento escondido y esquivo en "La Soledad del lector" que es cuando Markson le hablaba al lector cara a cara y afirmaba "Tengo un relato. Pero tendrás que esforzarte para encontrarlo", era cuando Markson se desenmascaraba de alguna forma y establecía que estaba hablando de sí mismo y que esta tetralogía no era otra cosa que una autobiografía medio encubierta porque había un relato soterrado entre las cientos de historias que estaba contando donde el mismo David Markson se desnudaba frente al lector. Y aquí vuelve a hacerlo, aquí David Markson es ya definitivamente el Escritor, melancólico y desesperanzado por los embates...
"Tu última novela fue un fiasco.
Toda esta preocupación apenas implicando, presumiblemente, que el Escritor se está poniendo viejo."
[...]
"Tu última novela fue un fracaso. Tienes dos hijos maravillosos a tu cargo. ¿No crees que sea momento de considerar hacer algo económicamente más responsable con tu vida?"
Esto es también una autobiografía, si el Escritor lo dice."
[...]
"El Escritor aquí, ya que estamos haciendo lo posible -hasta donde se lo permite su memoria- por no repetir cosas que incluyó en obras anteriores.
Es decir, en esta instancia, tampoco las cuatrocientas cincuenta o más muertes que fueron mencionados en su último libro."
Donde en "La soledad del lector", Markson reflexionaba en torno a lo difícil que de alguna forma era conectar con el público si eras fiel a ti mismo con obras siempre rechazadas por editoriales o incluso con obras costeados por uno mismo, y donde revoloteaba en torno a los temas recurrentes como el suicidio y la locura, aquí en Esto no es una novela, Markson se detiene sobre todo en la soledad y en la mortalidad. Toda esta obra está repleta de párrafos de escritores que en su vejez fueron de alguna forma incomprendidos, (como por ejemplo solo las ocho personas que asistieron al entierro de Robert Musil) o como una repetición recurrente, de qué murieron muchos de estos autores. Nada es gratuito porque Markson nos va marcando el camino para que cuando lleguemos al final de esta subyugante obra, se nos revele cuál es su miedo, y sabemos que él habla a través de los personajes que nos va desvelando:
"Estaba cansado y enfermo. Me quedé mirando el fiordo a través de la ventana. El sol se ponía. Las nubes estaban rojas. Cómo sangre. Sentí como si un grito atravesara la naturaleza.
Dijo Edvard Munch."
La estructura de "Esto no es una novela" es la misma que la de "La Soledad del Lector", hechos, párrafos, nombres sueltos aparentemente inconexos en una especie de puzzle adictivo pero que a la vez tienen una doble lectura en torno a los miedos y conflictos del autor frente a su obra y al público. El Lector que era uno de los personajes en La Soledad del lector, ha dado un pasó más y aquí se ha convertido en El Escritor, también personaje único. Este Escritor está obsesionado con establecer una conexión con su lector, una conexión que puede convertirse en una experiencia subyugante para el lector en el caso de que su mensaje le llegue:
"Una novela sin ningún tipo de indicio de,argumento, le gustaría idear al Escritor.
Y sin personajes. Ninguno.
Sin trama. Sin personajes.
Que sin embargo induzca al lector a seguir pasando las páginas.
Sin acción, la quiere el Escritor.
Es decir, sin sucesión de eventos.
Es decir, sin que se indique el
paso del tiempo.
Y q así y todo se llegue a algun lado.”
David Markson se embarcó en esta serie de novelas tan experimentales cuando ya había cumplido sus setenta años, después de una vida donde a su vez se había detenido en obras de género como el western y el noir, pero es aquí donde experimenta con una técnica narrativa que le lleva a mezclar géneros, y hablar a su vez de sí mismo y de su obra. Tal como comentaba en mi reseña de La soledad del lector, hay párrafos esquivos que pueden tener vida propia una vez que el lector los extrapola y los investiga a partir del texto de Markson, lo que convierte esta lectura en una experiencia fascinante. David Markson lanza un detalle esquivo en forma de pregunta misteriosa o en forma de detalle curioso… para que el lector le dé vida fuera de esta novela e intente averiguar más:
"Una deuda eterna y jamás olvidada que tiene el Escritor, desde la adolescencia:
Con Constance Garnett.
[...]
"Medio chiflada. La primera evaluación de Thomas Wentworth Higginson respecto de Emily Dickinson."
[...]
Calderon de la Barca una vez fue arrestado por acosar monjas.”
[...]
"Thomas Hardy escribió una biografía de sí mismo minuciosamente saneada y en tercera persona y la dejó para que su viuda simulara haberla escrito."
[..]
“Hemingway, sobre la acusación de traición a Ezra Pound:
Si Ezra tuviera algun criterio debería pegarse un tiro. Personalmente creo que debería haberse pegado un tiro un poco después del canto doce, aunque tal vez antes.”
[…]
“William Burroughs mató a esu esposa mientras trataba de dispararle a un vaso colocado sobre su cabeza a lo Guillermo Tell.”
Una vez más me pongo a los pies de David Markson que con esta obra ha vuelto a subyugarme y a plantearme cuestiones en torno al arte, que siempre estuvieron ahí y que sin embargo, es difícil detectar. Las innumerables referencias literarias, los autores, los filósofos, el arte, todo está conectado con la vida, la mortalidad... Una novela que no es una novela pero que SI lo es, a la que siempre podremos volver. Sigo hechizada por David Markson.
"Si lo deseas, no es un sueño.
Dijo Theodor Herzl."
August 5, 2023
I wish I can write This Is Not a Review, but I don’t have Markson’s talents to pull it off as he did with this extraordinary second installment in what would turn out to be his “Notecards Quartet” of four novels, which are in fact not novels at all (so far I read the first Reader’s Block and this one) yet they leave a trace in this reader’s mind perhaps even more powerfully than a conventional novel would. If it’s not a novel, then what else is it? In Reader’s Block, there were only two “characters”—Protagonist and Reader—now there’s only one, the Writer, so let him speak. It’s:
Markson defies every single conventional norm of novel-making as there is no plot or characters except for “Writer”. The entire book consists of a series of fragments with anecdotal references and literary quotations among which we periodically encounter the thoughts of Writer about the nature of the book we are reading. The Writer muses that, if he “says so”, this is “an epic poem”, “a sequence of cantos awaiting numbering”, “a mural of sorts”, “a continued heap of riddles”, “a polyphonic opera of a kind”, “a disquisition on the maladies of the life of art”, “a kind of verbal fugue”, “a treatise on the nature of man”, and, as it turns out, most movingly “even an autobiography, if Writer says so”. And the Writer was right in every way that he said so.
To pick up on its musical structure (“a polyphonic opera”, “a verbal fugue”), the referential fragments are certainly not random, as it might superficially appear. The rhythm and dynamics of their appearences are noticible through their periodic recurrences, either as counterpoints or continuing the same thread of sub-themes (or, musically speaking, “melodic threads”) and sometimes through their consecutive repetitions. Substantively, their content ranges from trivial or obscure coincidences in the lives of writers, artists, composers, opera singers… to those poignantly linked to the overarching death theme which is the Writer’s main obsession. There are many other obsessions as sub-themes, but they are always tonally hued in melancholy. Among many, there is the neglect of (posthumously famous) people during their lifetime, born and/or died in poverty, disparaged by the fellow writers/artists, buried in an unmarked grave, … And, as in the fugue to which the Writer at one point likens this book, their dark, melancholic tonality is even more accentuated when contrasted with counterpoints with rhythmic/periodic enumerations of the instances when fame is already achieved during the lifetime, or being admired by the fellow writers/artists to the extent that they are even pallbearers at their funerals, and other juxtaposing circumstances.
References, sometimes cryptic and at other times overt, to Jewishness, Strand bookshop, baseball, or lines from opera arias also clearly point to the autobiographical nature of the writing as these were Markson’s well-known real-life obsessions… which leaves us with a sense of sadness that, taking a cue from his referential fragments, he (Markson the Writer) wrote this book at the time when he felt deserted as a person, neglected as a writer, while stricken by various ailments to constantly ponder about his own mortality and the circumstances of his death, how, why, when… and, though Markson violates all the norms of novel-writing, there is the coda/denouement for the Writer and, as he heralds it from the very beginning on p. 4, it is “with a note of sadness at the end.” Sigh. Indeed. I can’t remember when a conventional novel left me with so much melancholy about its main “character” and its author as did the inimitable Markson and his Writer.
Nonlinear. Discontinuous. Collage-like. An assemblage.Why would a novelist choose to write a “novel” that is not a novel? If readers are “attentive”, they can indeed find the answer among Markson’s dispersed “notecards”:
Self-evident enough to scarcely need Writer's say-so.
Obstinately cross-referential and of cryptic interconnective syntax.
Here perhaps less than self-evident to the less than attentive. (p. 128)
You can actually draw so beautifully. Why do you spend your time making all these queer things?
Picasso: That’s why. (p. 156)
Writer has actually written some relatively traditional novels. Why is he spending his time doing this sort of thing?
That’s why. (p. 164)
Markson defies every single conventional norm of novel-making as there is no plot or characters except for “Writer”. The entire book consists of a series of fragments with anecdotal references and literary quotations among which we periodically encounter the thoughts of Writer about the nature of the book we are reading. The Writer muses that, if he “says so”, this is “an epic poem”, “a sequence of cantos awaiting numbering”, “a mural of sorts”, “a continued heap of riddles”, “a polyphonic opera of a kind”, “a disquisition on the maladies of the life of art”, “a kind of verbal fugue”, “a treatise on the nature of man”, and, as it turns out, most movingly “even an autobiography, if Writer says so”. And the Writer was right in every way that he said so.
To pick up on its musical structure (“a polyphonic opera”, “a verbal fugue”), the referential fragments are certainly not random, as it might superficially appear. The rhythm and dynamics of their appearences are noticible through their periodic recurrences, either as counterpoints or continuing the same thread of sub-themes (or, musically speaking, “melodic threads”) and sometimes through their consecutive repetitions. Substantively, their content ranges from trivial or obscure coincidences in the lives of writers, artists, composers, opera singers… to those poignantly linked to the overarching death theme which is the Writer’s main obsession. There are many other obsessions as sub-themes, but they are always tonally hued in melancholy. Among many, there is the neglect of (posthumously famous) people during their lifetime, born and/or died in poverty, disparaged by the fellow writers/artists, buried in an unmarked grave, … And, as in the fugue to which the Writer at one point likens this book, their dark, melancholic tonality is even more accentuated when contrasted with counterpoints with rhythmic/periodic enumerations of the instances when fame is already achieved during the lifetime, or being admired by the fellow writers/artists to the extent that they are even pallbearers at their funerals, and other juxtaposing circumstances.
References, sometimes cryptic and at other times overt, to Jewishness, Strand bookshop, baseball, or lines from opera arias also clearly point to the autobiographical nature of the writing as these were Markson’s well-known real-life obsessions… which leaves us with a sense of sadness that, taking a cue from his referential fragments, he (Markson the Writer) wrote this book at the time when he felt deserted as a person, neglected as a writer, while stricken by various ailments to constantly ponder about his own mortality and the circumstances of his death, how, why, when… and, though Markson violates all the norms of novel-writing, there is the coda/denouement for the Writer and, as he heralds it from the very beginning on p. 4, it is “with a note of sadness at the end.” Sigh. Indeed. I can’t remember when a conventional novel left me with so much melancholy about its main “character” and its author as did the inimitable Markson and his Writer.
November 13, 2017
This is Not a Review of This is Not a Novel
Patched together from pieces filched here and there.
Perhaps less than self-evident to the less than attentive.
The Strand Bookstore opened on Fourth Avenue in the same year (1927) that the writer was born.
18 miles of books. But once was eight.
The exact date of the writer’s death is unknown.
William H. Gass choked on a piece of undigested popcorn.
Reader is tired of reading maximalist pomo books salivated over by students of excess. If the book's length is not considered a merit, it has no other.
Writer did not authorise changes made by the publisher to the second printing of "This is Not a Novel".
Reader wants to write a review containing no aesthetic judgements.
Frank Sinatra starred in the film version of one of the writer’s novels.
The writer wrote "This book may have set the all-time record for boredom. At 1/3 of the length, it might have worked", "ugh get to the point", "oh god the pomposity, the bullshit!", and "If this were not my first Delillo, I probably would have quit 100 pages ago" in his copy of Don DeLillo’s "White Noise".
William T. Vollmann has clinically died three times.
The literary fame of Joseph McElroy condemns the taste of his age.
Rescue me from this drudgery.
Stephen Moore is an Australian hooker who has not read "The Recognitions".
Kurt Vonnegut was worried about the writer's mental condition.
Review with no declarations of greatness, reader wants to write.
William T. Vollmann uses a double to do readings and autograph his books at book launches.
Signed Alas not by William T. Vollmann.
David Foster Wallace thought the writer’s prose was hauntingly pedestrian.
Nothing more or less than a read, said the writer.
This is not the last novel by the writer.
The writer and the reader are each determined to see how little they can get away with.
Exeunt.
Patched together from pieces filched here and there.
Perhaps less than self-evident to the less than attentive.
The Strand Bookstore opened on Fourth Avenue in the same year (1927) that the writer was born.
18 miles of books. But once was eight.
The exact date of the writer’s death is unknown.
William H. Gass choked on a piece of undigested popcorn.
Reader is tired of reading maximalist pomo books salivated over by students of excess. If the book's length is not considered a merit, it has no other.
Writer did not authorise changes made by the publisher to the second printing of "This is Not a Novel".
Reader wants to write a review containing no aesthetic judgements.
Frank Sinatra starred in the film version of one of the writer’s novels.
The writer wrote "This book may have set the all-time record for boredom. At 1/3 of the length, it might have worked", "ugh get to the point", "oh god the pomposity, the bullshit!", and "If this were not my first Delillo, I probably would have quit 100 pages ago" in his copy of Don DeLillo’s "White Noise".
William T. Vollmann has clinically died three times.
The literary fame of Joseph McElroy condemns the taste of his age.
Rescue me from this drudgery.
Stephen Moore is an Australian hooker who has not read "The Recognitions".
Kurt Vonnegut was worried about the writer's mental condition.
Review with no declarations of greatness, reader wants to write.
William T. Vollmann uses a double to do readings and autograph his books at book launches.
Signed Alas not by William T. Vollmann.
David Foster Wallace thought the writer’s prose was hauntingly pedestrian.
Nothing more or less than a read, said the writer.
This is not the last novel by the writer.
The writer and the reader are each determined to see how little they can get away with.
Exeunt.
September 21, 2020
"Timor mortis conturbat me."
Al igual que en "La soledad del lector" y en una serie que abarca sus cuatro últimos libros, David Markson crea un estilo propio de escritura que es y no es una novela, plagando de datos interesantes y superfluos las páginas de este original libro.
Uno aprende mucho leyendo a Markson, fundamentalmente porque era un escritor que lo había leído todo y por el total conocimiento acerca de la vida y la muerte de todo tipo de artistas.
Nuevamente y con el correr de las páginas vamos develando lo que le ocurre al Escritor (que no es otro que él mismo) antes las incertidumbres de la creación de su propia obra.
Es de resaltar la constante presencia de la Muerte en todas las páginas y de la cantidad exorbitante de datos sobre el tipo de deceso de los artistas más famosos, sean escritores, músicos, pintores o escultores.
David Markson murió de un ataque cardíaco y fue hallado en su propia cama.
Por dos de sus propios hijos.
Al igual que en "La soledad del lector" y en una serie que abarca sus cuatro últimos libros, David Markson crea un estilo propio de escritura que es y no es una novela, plagando de datos interesantes y superfluos las páginas de este original libro.
Uno aprende mucho leyendo a Markson, fundamentalmente porque era un escritor que lo había leído todo y por el total conocimiento acerca de la vida y la muerte de todo tipo de artistas.
Nuevamente y con el correr de las páginas vamos develando lo que le ocurre al Escritor (que no es otro que él mismo) antes las incertidumbres de la creación de su propia obra.
Es de resaltar la constante presencia de la Muerte en todas las páginas y de la cantidad exorbitante de datos sobre el tipo de deceso de los artistas más famosos, sean escritores, músicos, pintores o escultores.
David Markson murió de un ataque cardíaco y fue hallado en su propia cama.
Por dos de sus propios hijos.
February 11, 2018
In which Markson engages in a Calvinoan attempt to avoid writing a proper novel. But the outcome is actually quite compelling reading, for those with an interest in literary history. And in the cascade of random facts and musings, he does manage to string together something of point, if not a narrative. This Is Not A Novel is a contemplation of the nature of art, and the legacy of the artist. It is an attempt to understand and rationalise death and disease - its randomness and inevitability - by a writer who had spend a significant portion of his career living beneath its shadow.
January 7, 2024
Back to David Markson’s Notecard Quartet. This second novel is about “Writer”, presumably Markson himself, as he attempts to write a novel. Simple enough. The first book, Reader’s Block, had Markson constantly discussing suicide when thinking of death. In this book, you are constantly told about the mode of death of different authors. Every single page, usually.
Let’s get right to it, here are some of my favourite bits:
A novel with no intimation of story whatsoever, Writer would like to contrive.
The King James Bible, the First Folio—both during James I.
Who on the other hand did not pay Chapman the royal stipend due on his translations.
Ernest Hemingway once challenged Hugh Casey to a boxing match. Casey knocked Hemingway down repeatedly.
Hemingway kicked Casey in the groin.
Much of what we have of Aristotle was not strictly speaking written by Aristotle at all. But would appear to be classroom notes taken down by others.
The word Bible never appears in Shakespeare. Jesus Christ is mentioned eleven times.
What is Hamlet reading, in Act II Scene ii, when Polonius inquires and Hamlet says Words, words, words?
Anthony Trollope wrote seven pages a day, seven days a week.
And would actually begin a new book if he came to the end of one before his day’s quota had been met.
Sadi. Rumi. Hafez.
Rembrandt worked so slowly, especially in his later years, that it became ever more difficult for him to find sitters.
In good part explaining the hundred-odd self-portraits.
The tail gunner on the Enola Gay wore a Brooklyn Dodgers cap.
Richard Feynman’s roommate, when they were both working at Los Alamos, was Klaus Fuchs.
The precious, pinchbeck, ultimately often flat prose of Vladimir Nabokov.
The fundamentally uninteresting sum total of his work.
June 16, 1904.
Stephen Dedalus has not had a bath since October 1903.
Edward Teller lost a foot in a streetcar accident.
Plato talked too much, Diogenes said.
While dismissing Socrates as a lunatic altogether.
Dickens’ astonishing manic walks. Of as many as twenty-five miles— and at a headlong pace.
He has no insight into character. And no dramatic talent. His dialogue hardens to wood and stone.
Said Emerson about its author after reading Oliver Twist.
Even in a palace it is possible to live well, said Marcus Aurelius.
Met him pike hoses.
J. Robert Oppenheimer died of throat cancer.
Archaeological evidence for the historical reality of Susan Sontag.
Balzac wrote more than two thousand characters into his Comedie humaine.
Get thee to a brewery.
Harold Bloom’s claim to the New York Times that he could read at a rate of five hundred pages per hour.
Writer’s arse.
Spectacular exhibition! Right this way, ladies and gentlemen! See Professor Bloom read the 1961 corrected and reset Random House edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses in one hour and thirty-three minutes. Not one page stinted. Unforgettable!
What’s this? Can’t spare an hour and a half? Wait, wait. Our matinee special, today only! Watch Professor Bloom eviscerate the Pears-McGuinness translation of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus – eight minutes and twenty-nine seconds flat! Guaranteed.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was evidently the first person in England ever to receive a ticket for speeding.
Thoreau:
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book?
Why does Writer sometimes seem to admire Ulysses even more when he is thinking about it than when he is actually reading it?
Is there a single Jane Austen volume that manages not to bring up the subject of money before the end of page one?
What a coarse, immoral, mean, and senseless work Hamlet is, Tolstoy said.
Did Professor Bloom take any books with him, do you know?
Someone said he had a twenty-six-volume complete Joseph Conrad. It’s only a weekend cruise.
The last book Freud read before his death was La Peau de chagrin by Balzac.
A man without feet, walking on his ankles. Someone insisted having seen at Hiroshima.
The time is close when you will have forgotten all things; and when all things will have forgotten you.
Said Marcus Aurelius.
Let’s get right to it, here are some of my favourite bits:
A novel with no intimation of story whatsoever, Writer would like to contrive.
The King James Bible, the First Folio—both during James I.
Who on the other hand did not pay Chapman the royal stipend due on his translations.
Ernest Hemingway once challenged Hugh Casey to a boxing match. Casey knocked Hemingway down repeatedly.
Hemingway kicked Casey in the groin.
Much of what we have of Aristotle was not strictly speaking written by Aristotle at all. But would appear to be classroom notes taken down by others.
The word Bible never appears in Shakespeare. Jesus Christ is mentioned eleven times.
What is Hamlet reading, in Act II Scene ii, when Polonius inquires and Hamlet says Words, words, words?
Anthony Trollope wrote seven pages a day, seven days a week.
And would actually begin a new book if he came to the end of one before his day’s quota had been met.
Sadi. Rumi. Hafez.
Rembrandt worked so slowly, especially in his later years, that it became ever more difficult for him to find sitters.
In good part explaining the hundred-odd self-portraits.
The tail gunner on the Enola Gay wore a Brooklyn Dodgers cap.
Richard Feynman’s roommate, when they were both working at Los Alamos, was Klaus Fuchs.
The precious, pinchbeck, ultimately often flat prose of Vladimir Nabokov.
The fundamentally uninteresting sum total of his work.
June 16, 1904.
Stephen Dedalus has not had a bath since October 1903.
Edward Teller lost a foot in a streetcar accident.
Plato talked too much, Diogenes said.
While dismissing Socrates as a lunatic altogether.
Dickens’ astonishing manic walks. Of as many as twenty-five miles— and at a headlong pace.
He has no insight into character. And no dramatic talent. His dialogue hardens to wood and stone.
Said Emerson about its author after reading Oliver Twist.
Even in a palace it is possible to live well, said Marcus Aurelius.
Met him pike hoses.
J. Robert Oppenheimer died of throat cancer.
Archaeological evidence for the historical reality of Susan Sontag.
Balzac wrote more than two thousand characters into his Comedie humaine.
Get thee to a brewery.
Harold Bloom’s claim to the New York Times that he could read at a rate of five hundred pages per hour.
Writer’s arse.
Spectacular exhibition! Right this way, ladies and gentlemen! See Professor Bloom read the 1961 corrected and reset Random House edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses in one hour and thirty-three minutes. Not one page stinted. Unforgettable!
What’s this? Can’t spare an hour and a half? Wait, wait. Our matinee special, today only! Watch Professor Bloom eviscerate the Pears-McGuinness translation of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus – eight minutes and twenty-nine seconds flat! Guaranteed.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was evidently the first person in England ever to receive a ticket for speeding.
Thoreau:
How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book?
Why does Writer sometimes seem to admire Ulysses even more when he is thinking about it than when he is actually reading it?
Is there a single Jane Austen volume that manages not to bring up the subject of money before the end of page one?
What a coarse, immoral, mean, and senseless work Hamlet is, Tolstoy said.
Did Professor Bloom take any books with him, do you know?
Someone said he had a twenty-six-volume complete Joseph Conrad. It’s only a weekend cruise.
The last book Freud read before his death was La Peau de chagrin by Balzac.
A man without feet, walking on his ankles. Someone insisted having seen at Hiroshima.
The time is close when you will have forgotten all things; and when all things will have forgotten you.
Said Marcus Aurelius.
January 14, 2017
This experimental book is a free flowing list, quotes and sayings from the author. Many interesting facts and perspectives.
April 3, 2022
Efectivamente como su título indica no se trata de una novela, al menos no de una novela al uso. Resulta totalmente inclasificable. Juega con lo experimental, por momentos te arranca la sonrisa, o una carcajada y podría tratarse incluso de un tratado de enfermedades y muertes de gentes del arte (así lo define el autor en algún momento).
Yo más bien creo que Markson hace cómplice al lector de su propuesta, entreteniendole, llevándole y moviéndole a su antojo para que este no acabe nunca de saber exactamente que es lo que lee, que no sea capaz de encasillarlo en género alguno.
No existen personajes, salvo el escritor, incluso me atrevería a decir que también el lector podría jugar ese papel. Apenas argumento, salvo la narración de cientos y cientos de muertes de artistas célebres como hilo conductor (toque existencialista que creo nos pone en suerte, la vida es una broma pesada y corta incluso hasta para las mentes másbrillantes) y en palabras de Markson en la última página del libro se trata de: "sencillamente una lectura no convencional, por lo general melancólica, aunque a veces incluso juguetona".
Demuestra conocimientos enciclopédicos y de ellos hace gala el autor, ya quisiera haber leído la mitad de lo que demuestra haber leído él.
Yo más bien creo que Markson hace cómplice al lector de su propuesta, entreteniendole, llevándole y moviéndole a su antojo para que este no acabe nunca de saber exactamente que es lo que lee, que no sea capaz de encasillarlo en género alguno.
No existen personajes, salvo el escritor, incluso me atrevería a decir que también el lector podría jugar ese papel. Apenas argumento, salvo la narración de cientos y cientos de muertes de artistas célebres como hilo conductor (toque existencialista que creo nos pone en suerte, la vida es una broma pesada y corta incluso hasta para las mentes másbrillantes) y en palabras de Markson en la última página del libro se trata de: "sencillamente una lectura no convencional, por lo general melancólica, aunque a veces incluso juguetona".
Demuestra conocimientos enciclopédicos y de ellos hace gala el autor, ya quisiera haber leído la mitad de lo que demuestra haber leído él.
abandoned
November 29, 2025Calling it quits here, as I feel I've ingested enough of these factoids. This was my second of Markson's non-novel novels, and while I appreciated the first one, I probably should've stopped there. I like other types of non-novel novels much better.
April 24, 2015
David Markson's tetralogy vibrates with energy. Madness and calamity in many artists' and writers' lives, the eternal critical affronts, the countless suicides. The deep, recursive fragmentary themes of mortality, artistic authenticity and self worth. Utter mesmerising genius. Pure originality of form.
September 8, 2013
the late david markson, even after his passing in 2010, will likely never achieve the wide acclaim he deserves. his experimental fiction couldn't possibly appeal to all that diverse an audience, yet his work remains nonetheless singular and important. this is not a novel will defy categorization and is perhaps best described simply as progressive literature. within this is not a novel, markson himself, or rather, the Writer, characterizes the work many different ways: "a novel," "epic poem," "mural," "autobiography," "polyphonic opera," "treatise," "assemblage," "fugue," and "disquisition on the maladies of the life of art," amongst others. if you haven't yet read any of markson's later works, a rich and rewarding bounty awaits.
yet seducing the reader into turning pages nonetheless.
the greatest lesbian poet since sappho, auden called rilke.
virtually beyond the Writer's imagining:
the lost eighty or so plays, each, of aeschylus and euripides.
the lost one hundred and ten of sophocles.
it is an aspect of probability that many improbable things will happen.
aristotle says agathon said.
spectacular exhibition! right this way, ladies and gentlemen! see professor harold bloom read the 1961 corrected and reset random house edition of james joyce's ulysses in one hour and thirty-three minutes. not one page stinted. unforgettable!
what's this? can't spare an hour and a half? wait, wait. one matinee special, today only! watch professor bloom eviscerate the pears-mcguinness translation of wittgenstein's tractatus - eight minutes and twenty-nine seconds flat! guaranteed.
everywhere have i sought peace and found it only in a corner with a book.
said thomas à kempis.
if you can do it, it ain't bragging.
May 3, 2014
Spoiler alert: This is not a novel.
But what is it really? It is a novel in that there is a writer-as-character (Writer), but it is also probably an autobiography. It is most certainly a list of anecdotes about famous writers, philosophers, artists, musicians, celebrities. It is like a Google search, if you just want to know something about someone. You can flip to any page in the book and read out of sequence and discover something new without feeling lost. It is a collection of scribbles from someone's notebook, random thoughts and wonderings, put together into one book. It is a book of a history - the history of our artists, the history of literature, the history of life. It is a reminder that everything is temporary, that legends outlive truth, that truth is subjective, that death is the only certainty. It allows the reader (Reader?) to question the pillars on which we place heroes, for in the end we all die some sort of death, no matter how skilled or talented or amazing an individual might be; or that they had some curiosities about them that we did not expect because we tend to believe our heroes are flawless. No one is flawless. And everyone dies.
But it is not a melancholy read, which is surprising as at times it is a book comprised of recognizable names and the manner in which they died. One would think that would take a toll on Reader, like that one part in 2666, but that is not the case here. (Though truly nothing is like that one part in 2666.)
This book could easily be read in one sitting, but I chose not to do so. In fact, I started this book almost 10 years ago and never finished it. It was a book sitting on my friend's coffee table and I started to flip through it, fascinated but annoyed by it, and pissed that I had never heard of it (even though at the time it was still relatively new), and angry at postmodernism in general. That friend turned into my boyfriend and somehow the book landed on my bookshelves (because that is how I roll, your books are not safe around me), and I always meant to go back and see what this novel-book-thing is all about. I chose to start over with it now because I won a copy of Fare Forward: Letters from David Markson through the Goodreads Giveaway program and I really wanted to read something by Markson before starting this collection of letters.
So now that is what I am going to do.
And, one day, I will die. And, one day, so will you. Says El.
But what is it really? It is a novel in that there is a writer-as-character (Writer), but it is also probably an autobiography. It is most certainly a list of anecdotes about famous writers, philosophers, artists, musicians, celebrities. It is like a Google search, if you just want to know something about someone. You can flip to any page in the book and read out of sequence and discover something new without feeling lost. It is a collection of scribbles from someone's notebook, random thoughts and wonderings, put together into one book. It is a book of a history - the history of our artists, the history of literature, the history of life. It is a reminder that everything is temporary, that legends outlive truth, that truth is subjective, that death is the only certainty. It allows the reader (Reader?) to question the pillars on which we place heroes, for in the end we all die some sort of death, no matter how skilled or talented or amazing an individual might be; or that they had some curiosities about them that we did not expect because we tend to believe our heroes are flawless. No one is flawless. And everyone dies.
But it is not a melancholy read, which is surprising as at times it is a book comprised of recognizable names and the manner in which they died. One would think that would take a toll on Reader, like that one part in 2666, but that is not the case here. (Though truly nothing is like that one part in 2666.)
This book could easily be read in one sitting, but I chose not to do so. In fact, I started this book almost 10 years ago and never finished it. It was a book sitting on my friend's coffee table and I started to flip through it, fascinated but annoyed by it, and pissed that I had never heard of it (even though at the time it was still relatively new), and angry at postmodernism in general. That friend turned into my boyfriend and somehow the book landed on my bookshelves (because that is how I roll, your books are not safe around me), and I always meant to go back and see what this novel-book-thing is all about. I chose to start over with it now because I won a copy of Fare Forward: Letters from David Markson through the Goodreads Giveaway program and I really wanted to read something by Markson before starting this collection of letters.
So now that is what I am going to do.
And, one day, I will die. And, one day, so will you. Says El.
December 2, 2013
Great, as one would expect, but somehow slightly lacking in something vital which is present in the rest of the series. I think that the “reveal” at the end was unnecessary (and patently obvious really from the obsessions of the text) and it all just felt a little less tightly bound together in some way – as if the threads behind the words/factoids were thinner and less emotionally resonant.
Nevertheless, well worth reading, and re-reading, as are they all...
Nevertheless, well worth reading, and re-reading, as are they all...
April 4, 2012
Kind of a novel. Also lots of other things, mainly a list. Of the the circumstances of the deaths of various writers and artists, of writers and artists writing about other writers and artists, general lit/art trivia. With uncredited or tangentially credited quotations and "personal" insertions from the Writer of this book lending a more insistent cadence. Rather terminal, so self-denying, so literature-denying in its way, and obsessed as it is with end points, deaths and how people live on in memory and the historical record. Sort of tragic, sort of funny, generally more readable than it might sound.
Lots of the bits will certainly be remembered. For instance: Apparently Proust was known as "the little Marcel" for most of his adult life. I'm definitely going to refer to him in this way from now on.
Lots of the bits will certainly be remembered. For instance: Apparently Proust was known as "the little Marcel" for most of his adult life. I'm definitely going to refer to him in this way from now on.
September 6, 2021
সুবিমল মিশ্রের এন্টি-উপন্যাস ঘরানার রচনা। ডেভিড মার্কসনের চাইতে আমি সুবিমলকেই এগিয়ে রাখবো। শুধু পূর্বসুরী বলেই নয়, বরং সুবিমলের বয়ানটার সাথেও অধিক সংযোগ করতে পারায়৷
May 15, 2014
¿Qué hace Markson que se vuelve adictivo leerlo? ¿Es que acaso, pulverizar la literatura hasta volverla anécdota, instante, chisme, para luego regurgitarla nuevamente como literatura posmoderna en apenas guiños es altamente efectivo?
Si es así, ¿por qué no es más bestseller Markson que Rowling? ¿Dónde está la versión fílmica de estos libros al mejor estilo saga de “Los juegos del hambre”?
Leer a Markson se torna como ese tipo de pláticas que puedes tener con uno de esos contadísimos profesores que tienen una vasta cultura, no solo literaria, sino más amplia.
Uno de mis grandes maestros es mi papá, y aún atesoro la ocasión en que me dijo que “podía platicar conmigo”, que por fin había encontrado con quien conversar. Creo que fue un halago exagerado, pero, igual lo valoro.
¿Con quién conversaba Markson? Sabemos que fue amigo de Lowry, y de otros más, pero, con quién platicaba. ¿Hablaba solo como su Escritor? ¿Cómo otros escritores?
Qué bueno que no soy un estructuralista, porque de serlo estaría realizando fichas bibliográficas tratando de cruzar todas y cada una de las referencias de este libro. De encontrar su sentido, su
fundamento, cuando, después de unos cuantos párrafos es posible escuchar su música propia. Su arrullo. De sentir el vaivén al dar vuelta a las páginas.
Qué bueno que he tenido buenos maestros que me permiten disfrutar este tipo de obras, que me permiten entrever que aún hay mucho, muchísimo por leer y por comprender.
Markson conversa no con los lectores que somos al leer sus libros, sino con aquellos que seremos una vez que el silencio sea nuestro lenguaje en común.
Si es así, ¿por qué no es más bestseller Markson que Rowling? ¿Dónde está la versión fílmica de estos libros al mejor estilo saga de “Los juegos del hambre”?
Leer a Markson se torna como ese tipo de pláticas que puedes tener con uno de esos contadísimos profesores que tienen una vasta cultura, no solo literaria, sino más amplia.
Uno de mis grandes maestros es mi papá, y aún atesoro la ocasión en que me dijo que “podía platicar conmigo”, que por fin había encontrado con quien conversar. Creo que fue un halago exagerado, pero, igual lo valoro.
¿Con quién conversaba Markson? Sabemos que fue amigo de Lowry, y de otros más, pero, con quién platicaba. ¿Hablaba solo como su Escritor? ¿Cómo otros escritores?
Qué bueno que no soy un estructuralista, porque de serlo estaría realizando fichas bibliográficas tratando de cruzar todas y cada una de las referencias de este libro. De encontrar su sentido, su
fundamento, cuando, después de unos cuantos párrafos es posible escuchar su música propia. Su arrullo. De sentir el vaivén al dar vuelta a las páginas.
Qué bueno que he tenido buenos maestros que me permiten disfrutar este tipo de obras, que me permiten entrever que aún hay mucho, muchísimo por leer y por comprender.
Markson conversa no con los lectores que somos al leer sus libros, sino con aquellos que seremos una vez que el silencio sea nuestro lenguaje en común.
February 4, 2012
4.5 stars. The funniest, most freewheeling, and self-justifying of the Markson anti-novels I've read so far. However, throughout it also felt slighter and the web it wove a bit looser than his other "author" books, though I was surprised to find the ending packed an even greater wallop. I'm splitting hairs on my rating here because ultimately all these books seem essential.
November 24, 2024
Uzun zamandır okuduğum en keyifli kitap olabilir. Kaliteli bir eğlence oldu.
Read
May 27, 2025I've reviewed a different edition here .
March 30, 2011
I read this book after graduating from SFSU's undergraduate creative writing program. Meta fiction (writing about writing) was big back then. I read some terrible stories in workshop about people who cared about nothing except how smart and unusual they were at the old age of 24. Apparently, being smart didn't include learning basic spelling or grammar or rudimentary proofreading skills. But I digress. I read this book in 2001 and it brought me back to smart novels. David Markson ostensibly writes in the style of meta fiction, but with feeling, something I felt wasn't in style. The book is made up of 1 or 2 sentence paragraphs about quotes from famous artists, usually about death, with interjections from The Writer and his despair. Seems senseless, but the lyrical way that the bits of tragic trivia come together is quite amazing, a poem-like novel. Kind of makes you want to be a better writer and reader.
May 2, 2011
I am still really not sure what to say about this book. I don't think I have even begun to understand it, and I would like to read it several more times to see how much I can puzzle out. It is, as the title purports, Not A Novel (et cela n'est pas une pipe, aussi), being a book without characters or plot but which nonetheless compels the reader (easily!) to glide through its 190 pages. In lieu of characters or plot, the writer provides trivia, coincidences, and miscellany about writers, artists, and other intellectuals, which at first appear to be unrelated but later begin to settle into a pattern or whole. The repeated details of illnesses, hygiene and fame eventually point toward the writer's own obsessions with these topics, his own hypochondria and desire for immortality.
This book, like so many others, reminded me of how little I have read (and how little I have retained of what I have read): the times I could identify a quote or place a word or phrase into the larger puzzle of the book, I felt inordinately proud of myself. So much more of the book went right by me, isolated phrases that seemed unrelated but that I knew I Ought To Recognize. I am seriously considering purchasing the book, looking up every quote and reference in its pages, and explicating the text in its margins.
So. It is nearly impossible for me to explain what the book is, let alone to discuss its value or recommend it, but I highly enjoyed the experience of reading it just the same, and maybe you will too. If nothing else, much of the trivia is interesting, funny, and the sort of thing you want to stop and read out loud to whomever happens to be in the room at the same time as you.
This book, like so many others, reminded me of how little I have read (and how little I have retained of what I have read): the times I could identify a quote or place a word or phrase into the larger puzzle of the book, I felt inordinately proud of myself. So much more of the book went right by me, isolated phrases that seemed unrelated but that I knew I Ought To Recognize. I am seriously considering purchasing the book, looking up every quote and reference in its pages, and explicating the text in its margins.
So. It is nearly impossible for me to explain what the book is, let alone to discuss its value or recommend it, but I highly enjoyed the experience of reading it just the same, and maybe you will too. If nothing else, much of the trivia is interesting, funny, and the sort of thing you want to stop and read out loud to whomever happens to be in the room at the same time as you.
May 28, 2013
This non-novel by this not non-writer is the second in Writer's series of four books(see: tetralogy).
Was the book also the last at one point?
Or was it always second, before the birth of the third?
The fourth is the final.
As was the first. The second. The third.
What was intended as the final?
All -- or at least some -- things are cut short.
The anecdotes die off quickly, with no failure of heart.
Some, it would seem, resurrect.
Or is it repeated?
Writer blends and blurs, but beginnings rarely surface.
But an ending is here.
Is there.
Is there?
It's there.
It's there?
Was the book also the last at one point?
Or was it always second, before the birth of the third?
The fourth is the final.
As was the first. The second. The third.
What was intended as the final?
All -- or at least some -- things are cut short.
The anecdotes die off quickly, with no failure of heart.
Some, it would seem, resurrect.
Or is it repeated?
Writer blends and blurs, but beginnings rarely surface.
But an ending is here.
Is there.
Is there?
It's there.
It's there?
December 31, 2017
3.5
La lectora tuvo por momentos deseos de prender fuego este libro.
La lectora tuvo por momentos deseos de prender fuego este libro.
February 1, 2023
«El odio al burgués es el comienzo de toda virtud, dijo Flaubert»
August 20, 2022
I am shocked that aside from Vanishing Point all of Markson’s novels in this series have such dogshit titles—had kept me off reading them for years, anticipating some hackneyed metafiction hijinks.
All to say—this is great, sad, moving, endlessly intriguing, like Sebald without the plot, and unlike Sebald, often quite funny.
All to say—this is great, sad, moving, endlessly intriguing, like Sebald without the plot, and unlike Sebald, often quite funny.
December 13, 2023
And it is not a novel. "Author" states that he doesn't want characters or a setting or plot or descriptions, and yet this reader could not stop turning the pages of this creation - an intricate artifact, a catalog of loss, deaths, erudite gossip, an epic poem really, but without what we think of when we think of poetry; the associations one conjures up from the kaleidoscopic randomness of facts and truths is fascinating and ever-changing. And the momentum that gathers from the very start is as forward-moving as the best of traditional narrative can be. Impossible to accurately describe and fabulous.
October 16, 2012
Someone with a fondness for experimental literature put David Markson's novel (Book? Read? Thing?) This Is Not A Novel on the fiction display downstairs and I was lucky enough to find it. Thanks, to whoever put it there. This is a fantastic, crazy, experimental, and ultimately poignant book.
Here are the first paragraphs: "Writer is pretty much tempted to quit writing. Writer is weary unto death of making up stories. Lord Byron died of either rheumatic fever, or typhus, or uremia or malaria. Or was inadvertently murdered by his doctors, who had bled him incessantly." What follows is nearly 200 pages of quotes and allusions: Random, weird, beautiful and most centered around writing, art, and death. Famous quotes and anecdotes are sprinkled with lines of poetry and stories, mixed occasionally with sentences discussing the ability of a novel to exist without setting, character, plot or conflict.
This is a polarizing book, to be sure. If you are put off by experimental fiction such as the work of John Barth, Richard Brautigan or Donald Barthelme, you will probably feel this book is gimmicky or lazy. Still other readers may not have the patience to read 200 pages of seemingly random, pointless quotes and bits of trivia. However, on closer scrutiny the novel becomes just that: a novel. While plot is nonexistent, a story of sorts exists beneath the veneer of meaningless non sequiturs. Themes and patterns become visible. Writer, the narrator and sole "character" of the work, emerges as a man unwell, a man alone and dying, looking for meaning in life, searching for some kind of immortality, or perhaps just the staying power of books and writing. His interaction with the reader, and perhaps the quotes and allusions he records, makes this a very personal, warm account, rather than a sterile thought experiment.
The great conflict of this book is whether Writer can create a novel that is "Plotless. Characterless", and "yet seduc(es) the reader into turning pages nonetheless." Though I loved the quotes and the experimental nature of this book, one of the reasons I followed it through to its conclusion was to discover if, or how well, Markson's Writer could do it. Amazingly, he succeeds in my opinion. The book was not a chore to read. His quotes and allusions (even the more unreliable ones) gave me new insight into some favorite writers and the power of literature and the written word.
Ultimately, the book came to a satisfying conclusion. Some readers on Amazon may not agree with me, but I was moved by the turn of the last few pages and Markson accomplished something I thought would be impossible: bringing a book such as this, a list of deaths essentially, to a satisfying, emotional conclusion. My experience with the novel became more real when upon finishing the book and discovering that David Markson died alone two years ago. Markson's own death made the noveleven more haunting and thought provoking. However, it wasn't a gloomy end. Markson's book, though devoid of any hope for God or religious rebirth, accentuated the power of the written word to keep memory and art alive for new generations.
Here are the first paragraphs: "Writer is pretty much tempted to quit writing. Writer is weary unto death of making up stories. Lord Byron died of either rheumatic fever, or typhus, or uremia or malaria. Or was inadvertently murdered by his doctors, who had bled him incessantly." What follows is nearly 200 pages of quotes and allusions: Random, weird, beautiful and most centered around writing, art, and death. Famous quotes and anecdotes are sprinkled with lines of poetry and stories, mixed occasionally with sentences discussing the ability of a novel to exist without setting, character, plot or conflict.
This is a polarizing book, to be sure. If you are put off by experimental fiction such as the work of John Barth, Richard Brautigan or Donald Barthelme, you will probably feel this book is gimmicky or lazy. Still other readers may not have the patience to read 200 pages of seemingly random, pointless quotes and bits of trivia. However, on closer scrutiny the novel becomes just that: a novel. While plot is nonexistent, a story of sorts exists beneath the veneer of meaningless non sequiturs. Themes and patterns become visible. Writer, the narrator and sole "character" of the work, emerges as a man unwell, a man alone and dying, looking for meaning in life, searching for some kind of immortality, or perhaps just the staying power of books and writing. His interaction with the reader, and perhaps the quotes and allusions he records, makes this a very personal, warm account, rather than a sterile thought experiment.
The great conflict of this book is whether Writer can create a novel that is "Plotless. Characterless", and "yet seduc(es) the reader into turning pages nonetheless." Though I loved the quotes and the experimental nature of this book, one of the reasons I followed it through to its conclusion was to discover if, or how well, Markson's Writer could do it. Amazingly, he succeeds in my opinion. The book was not a chore to read. His quotes and allusions (even the more unreliable ones) gave me new insight into some favorite writers and the power of literature and the written word.
Ultimately, the book came to a satisfying conclusion. Some readers on Amazon may not agree with me, but I was moved by the turn of the last few pages and Markson accomplished something I thought would be impossible: bringing a book such as this, a list of deaths essentially, to a satisfying, emotional conclusion. My experience with the novel became more real when upon finishing the book and discovering that David Markson died alone two years ago. Markson's own death made the noveleven more haunting and thought provoking. However, it wasn't a gloomy end. Markson's book, though devoid of any hope for God or religious rebirth, accentuated the power of the written word to keep memory and art alive for new generations.
July 7, 2010
Writer sets out to write a novel without characters, action, setting, conflict, social themes, plot or any of the other trappings of fiction.
His goal: to keep the reader turning pages. Does Writer succeed? Yes and no, but that's kind of the point.
"This is a novel if Writer or Robert Rauschenberg says so," announces David Markson's Writer early in This Is Not a Novel.
On paper, TINAN is a series of short epigrammatic statements that, overall, as I read it, meditate sardonically the absurd struggle of the artists' life.
In short, Twitterlike bursts, Markson catalogs the quarrels and untimely demises, but especially the demises, that characterize the lives of humanity's best-known artists. TINAN's litany of artistic suffering begins with the first line, "Writer is pretty much tempted to quit writing," and goes on to show, overall, how in contrast to their achievements, most great artists didn't fare so well in real life.
Here's an exceprt (p. 125)
"Vaslav Nijinsky died of kidney failure after decades of insanity.
O. Henry died penniless.
The North Sea, Karl Marx's ashes were scattered in.
Djuna Barnes Drive. Anne Sexton Street.
Calcutta, Thackeray was born in.
Bombay, Kipling was.
Gaspara Stampa died of what may have been cancer of the womb.
Ovid left twice as much work as any other Roman poet.
And said he had destroyed endless pages more, as unsatisfactory."
That gives you an idea. At times, I felt like this was a book for clever postmodern types who fancy themselves as people who "get it," which means, they get everything that's arch and experimental and inaccessible to the hoi polloi.
"Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum, Lucretius said. Such are the evils that religion prompts." = OK...
But as with many works of art that are more about the exercise of creation and the experience of consumption than about the content, I got out of TINAN what I put into it.
I also learned that at age 76, Bertrand Russell survived an ocean plane crash in which a number of other passengers were killed.
Tweet that.
His goal: to keep the reader turning pages. Does Writer succeed? Yes and no, but that's kind of the point.
"This is a novel if Writer or Robert Rauschenberg says so," announces David Markson's Writer early in This Is Not a Novel.
On paper, TINAN is a series of short epigrammatic statements that, overall, as I read it, meditate sardonically the absurd struggle of the artists' life.
In short, Twitterlike bursts, Markson catalogs the quarrels and untimely demises, but especially the demises, that characterize the lives of humanity's best-known artists. TINAN's litany of artistic suffering begins with the first line, "Writer is pretty much tempted to quit writing," and goes on to show, overall, how in contrast to their achievements, most great artists didn't fare so well in real life.
Here's an exceprt (p. 125)
"Vaslav Nijinsky died of kidney failure after decades of insanity.
O. Henry died penniless.
The North Sea, Karl Marx's ashes were scattered in.
Djuna Barnes Drive. Anne Sexton Street.
Calcutta, Thackeray was born in.
Bombay, Kipling was.
Gaspara Stampa died of what may have been cancer of the womb.
Ovid left twice as much work as any other Roman poet.
And said he had destroyed endless pages more, as unsatisfactory."
That gives you an idea. At times, I felt like this was a book for clever postmodern types who fancy themselves as people who "get it," which means, they get everything that's arch and experimental and inaccessible to the hoi polloi.
"Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum, Lucretius said. Such are the evils that religion prompts." = OK...
But as with many works of art that are more about the exercise of creation and the experience of consumption than about the content, I got out of TINAN what I put into it.
I also learned that at age 76, Bertrand Russell survived an ocean plane crash in which a number of other passengers were killed.
Tweet that.
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