Aug 28 ’08
Simsy—
A quick question, at your new address.118 Why, in your (very good) essay, do you say I called one book This Is Not a Novel because a reviewer did?119 Do I say that, in there? Did I, in casual conversation? I had René Magritte in mind—Ceci n’est pas un pipe—and then remembered Diderot—Not a Conte—and I’m sure (pretty sure) I named both of those in the text. But not what you say. Just curious, because it made me scowl both times I read it. (I did read it twice, honest.)
Gimme a yell in an odd moment while settling in, eh? Otherwise you are contributing to my increasing senility.
Love again—
D.
118 We’d arrived in Brooklyn.
119 This was exactly the kind of response I’d been dreading. At the time, I was positive I had a solid source for that quote — that one reviewer had called Reader’s Block “not a novel,” so David had called his next one This Is Not a Novel as a kind of sarcastic response — but now I don’t recall what my source was, and I don’t remember how I resolved this with David, either.
May 29 ‘09
Simsy, love—
Will you do me a small kindness, in a spare half-minute? I sent postals to half a dozen of the people who wrote in that notebook you passed around at the AWP panel120—most of whom I knew — but wanted to say six words to one other, who gave me only an e-mail address. And me sans computer, of course. Since she’ll recognize your name, could you send her 10 words telling her of my backwardness, but that I’ve wanted to say thanks for her kind note and only this tardily thought to ask you to do so.
I do appreciate it. And now you learn — do Markson one kindness,* and you’re doomed to be pestered for others eternally!
With school presumably over, I hope you’re writing up a storm. When was that next book due? You guys getting away somewhere, maybe?
Me, I may very well be retired — ex-writer David. Gawd, just awful.
Much love again—
D.
*Rather more than one!
120 In February of 2009, I chaired a panel at the AWP conference, “In Celebration of David Markson,” with panelists Francoise Palleau-Papin, Martha Cooley, M.J. Fitzgerald, Joe Tabbi, and Brian Evenson. As part of the event, we passed a book of index cards around in which audience members could write messages to David. David had written some introductory remarks that were read aloud, too — page 143.
Mar 7 ‘10
Hey, Symsy—
Why the hell did I put a “y” in there?121
You OK? Seems like back around Christmas or so when I left you a hello on the machine — and no word since. You are, I hope, writing? And both well?
Meantime nada here. Everything I can think of would be making me repeat myself — and I almost prefer the silence. (Actually, I hate it.)
Hey, all love—
David122
121 I’d often wondered that myself!
122 My last postcard from David. We talked after this, though, at least once before he died.
~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~
David Markson and the Problem of the Novel123
by Laura Sims
In Markson’s Reader’s Block (Dalkey Archive, 1996), the narrator asks early on:
What is a novel in any case? (
RB
, 13)
To which he adds, musing on the work he anticipates writing, which bears a striking resemblance to Reader’s Block itself:
Nonlinear? Discontinuous? Collage-like?
An assemblage? (
RB
, 14)
At the very end of Reader’s Block, and in the books that follow in this loosely defined tetralogy, including This Is Not a Novel (Counterpoint, 2001), Vanishing Point (Shoemaker & Hoard, 2004), and The Last Novel (Shoemaker & Hoard, 2007), this description reappears, albeit more emphatically; periods have replaced the question marks:
Nonlinear. Discontinuous. Collage-like. An assemblage. (
RB
, 193)
Nonlinear. Discontinuous. Collage-like. An assemblage. (
TINN,
128)
Nonlinear. Discontinuous. Collage-like. An assemblage. (
VP
, 12)
Nonlinear. Discontinuous. Collage-like. An assemblage. (
TINN,
8)
And from his latest book, The Last Novel, after more than a decade of employing this particular form:
Novelist’s personal genre. For all its seeming fragmentation, nonetheless
obstinately cross-referential and of cryptic interconnective syntax. (
TLN,
51)
Vanishing Point begins with a quote from William de Kooning:
Every so often, a painter has to destroy painting. Cezanne did it. Picasso did it with cubism. Then Pollock did it. He busted our idea of a picture all to hell. (
VP
, 1)
And from This Is Not a Noveclass="underline"
You can actually draw so beautifully. Why do you spend your time making all these queer things?
Picasso: That’s why.
…
Writer has actually written some relatively traditional novels. Why is he spending his time doing this sort of thing?
That’s why.
(
TINN
, 156, 164)
All of which would seem to confirm Markson’s reputation as a highly experimental, “difficult” postmodern writer “who write[s] writing” instead of stories, and who aims to rebuild the novel, in form and content, from scratch. (RB, 163)
What complicates this picture, though, is Markson’s undeniable gift for “seducing the reader into turning pages,” a phrase we may associate more readily with paperback romances or mystery novels than with serious literature (TINN, 3). But Markson, while pushing the boundaries of the novel form, and of contemporary fiction in general, still manages to design characters, stories, and fictional worlds as rich and fully engrossing as those found in more traditional works, however fragmented and unfamiliar these components may appear at first glance. These refurbished versions of traditional elements collaborate with the more easily discernible experimental aspects of his novels to make his work a remarkable hybrid: fiction that is emotionally satisfying, intellectually rewarding, formally distinctive, and compulsively readable all at once.
*
In This Is Not a Novel, so named after a review dismissed his earlier book, Reader’s Block, as “not a novel,” Markson’s narrator contemplates how the protagonist, Writer, whose style seems to bear a close resemblance to Markson’s, aims to bust our idea of a novel all to helclass="underline"
A novel with no intimation of story whatsoever, Writer would like to contrive.
And with no characters. None. (
TINN,
2)
Plotless. Characterless. (
TINN,
3)
Actionless, Writer wants it.
Which is to say, with no