This Is Not a Novel [Anglais] [Broché]

Over the course of his career, Markson (Wittgenstein's Mistress; Reader's Block; etc.) has garnered high praise for his erudite, complex texts that challenge notions of genre. He continues to push against the boundaries of fiction with his latest, which echoes the titles of both Magritte's well-known painting of a pipe and a story by Diderot. Lacking plot or characters, this darkly humorous assemblage resembles a commonplace book or a notebook, such as Coleridge's or Emerson's, with entries noting odd facts, quotes and ideas. These entries averaging around 10 per page have the air of memoranda pointing to some future, more fully realized passage that might never materialize. Occasional appearances by someone called Writer ("Not being a character but the author, here") add a note of self-consciousness, reminding us of the performative nature of any work of art. Themes soon emerge: illness, art, fame and hygiene are obvious preoccupations. The entries lead us down the page, maintaining a brisk momentum. There are deaths (Pound of a blocked intestine, Manet of tertiary syphilis), quotations and seemingly out-of-context questions although it is apparent that context is rather beside the point. These references imply some ad hoc, interior encyclopedia: "The legend that as a young man Leonardo was so strong he could straighten a horseshoe with his bare hands." It is best to take Markson at his word and read this not as a novel but as some jester cousin to Pound's Cantos notations that gradually cohere in an underlying progress, a drift toward the momentary reconciliation of art, intellect and mortality. (Apr. 1)Forecast: Markson is at once unpredictable and reliable, to which the inclusion of blurbs from Ann Beattie and David Foster Wallace attests. This book won't appeal for most general fiction readers, but admirers of the author will seek out and savor his latest.

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Of course novelist Markson's latest book is a novel. What else could this rueful combination of fact and fictionalized self-portraiture, this book-length list of odd bits of trivia about artists' lives, most of which perversely focuses on their deaths, be called? The "Writer," as the compulsive, hypochondriac narrator refers to himself, has amassed this quirky collection of seemingly random yet wittily connected data in lieu of writing, an activity he's finding difficult, if not repugnant, what with all his headaches and general malaise. Terse and stoic, he's all over the map, tossing off bulletins about Sappho, Fitzgerald, Blake, Picasso, Flaubert, Emerson, and Mahler; relishing snide remarks artists make about each other; and periodically alluding to his desire to write a novel with no characters, plot, or setting, a mission he slyly accomplishes. Mischievous, funny, and smart, Markson will greatly amuse readers who share his fascination with art and the clash between the sublime and the ridiculous that fractures every artist's life. Donna Seaman
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"I don't know where to put the man-and for this I am glad.... Magnificent, a compilation that so exceeds the scatter of its parts that one must take some time to ponder why this should be. ... it's almost impossible to stop turning pages ... we realize: This is not a novel. It's a poem. ... When I reached the final pages, I felt, as all too seldom, sectioned off from the daily tyranny, released, as in a happy dream, into a kind of referential fugue-the afterlife of reading." Sven Birkerts, The New York Observer

"A cultural history of the Western world cast as a bricolage of decontextualized anecdotes, quotations, and facts. ... A lifetime's reading boiled down to sentences that have the terse clarity of epitaphs. ... This rigorously experimental work, of the sort that one tends to slog through dutifully, reads as addictively as an airport thriller." James Gibbons, BookForum

"The book does, as Writer hopes, seduce the reader into turning pages. ... Those with investigative proclivities can trace Writer's gloomy preoccupations through the items about how various notables died (and which states of financial destitution). Other items are more enigmatic (why did Henry James hide behind a tree to avoid Ford Madox Ford?), and a handful have an evocative, lovely melancholy: 'When and where did the last person die who still believed in the existence of Zeus?'" Laura Miller, The New York Times Book Review

This Is Not a Novel is a "novel" like none ever written, with the possible exception of David Markson's own Reader's Block (1996), which Ann Beattie has labeled "a work of genius."

This Is Not a Novel is a highly inventive work which drifts "genre-less," somewhere in between fiction, nonfiction, and psychological memoir. In the opening pages of the "novel," a narrator, called only "Writer," announces that he is tired of inventing characters, contemplating plot, setting, theme, and conflict. Yet the writer is determined to seduce the reader into turning pages-and to "get somewhere," nonetheless.

What follows are pages crammed with short lines of astonishingly fascinating literary and artistic anecdotes, quotations, and cultural curiosities. This Is Not a Novel is leavened with Markson's deliciously ironic wit and laughter, so that when the writer does indeed finally get us "somewhere" it's the journey will have mattered as much as the arrival.

David Markson is the author of five novels, including Springer's Progress, Wittgenstein's Mistress, and Reader's Block. He is the recipient of several awards and fellowships, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and a Salon Book Award. He lives in New York City.