sequence of events.
Which is to say, with no indicated
passage of time.
(
TINN,
4)
A novel with no
setting.
With no so-called furniture.
Ergo meaning finally without
description. (TINN,
5)
With no social themes, i.e., no picture of society.
No depiction of contemporary manners and/or morals.
Categorically, with no politics. (
TINN,
7)
A novel entirely without symbols. (
TINN,
8)
Ultimately, a work of art without even a subject, Writer wants. (
TINN,
9)
At which point a quote interjects to disagree:
There is no work of art without a subject, said Ortega. (
TINN,
10)
Then another quote interjects to disagree with the previous:
If you can do it, it ain’t bragging, said Dizzy Dean. (
TINN,
10)
Insinuating, perhaps, that Writer can “do it,” and by association, that Markson can “do it” as well, and therefore is entitled to brag. But we encounter an obstacle to this reading when Writer’s existence is called into question:
Does Writer even exist?
In a book without characters?
…
Obviously Writer exists.
Not being a character but the author, here.
Writer is
writing,
for heaven’s sake. (
TINN,
13)
Despite the assertion that he exists as an author, Writer remains confined to the page as a character who is thinking about writing a book, which means that the book we’re reading is not, after all, a characterless novel, and does not, therefore, fulfill the standards Writer has set out for his own hypothetical novel. This is the first indication that, however closely it appears to mirror the book Writer hopes to write, one that would destroy all hallmarks of genre, This Is Not a Novel remains faithful to certain generic conventions, however unconventionally.
Writer, for instance, is a highly unconventional character.
Like Whitman, he “contain[s] multitudes.” Namely: Lorca, Dalí, Chagall, Capote, Sophocles, Kerouac, Corbière, Cato, Melville, Lardner, O’Keefe, and so on. In a feat of intertextual finesse, fragments by and quotes about artists, writers, musicians, fictional characters, and historical figures flit through his head (i.e. across the page), intermingling to tell us who Writer is, what he thinks, feels, and believes, and successfully taking the place of traditional character development. We know, for instance, that Writer is obsessed with death, due to the recurrence of quotes like these:
Richard Burton died of a cerebral hemorrhage.
Death-of-the-Month Club.
Ensor died at eighty-nine.
Having done every bit of his significant work before he was forty.
Thomas Wolfe died of tuberculosis which had spread to the brain. (
TINN,
137)
In order to see Writer as a character, the reader must be willing to fill in the white space around the sparse lines, and find meaning in the juxtapositions, tracking them as they build throughout each book, or even from one book to the next. For instance, Writer’s moribund obsession may seem meaningless to the reader who expects a writer to hand him a character’s motivations on a platter. Markson expects attentive resourcefulness from his readers, and waits until page 190, the last page of the book, to drop this:
Writer’s cancer.
At this point, only the reader who has actively collaborated with the text will have formed enough of an emotional attachment to Writer to feel gratified, and deeply moved, by this admission and by the book’s last line:
Farewell and be kind.
*
Although This Is Not a Novel does not satisfy Writer’s genre-busting dreams in terms of character, Markson seems, at first glance, to have successfully discarded plot. Writer’s circular thoughts, for instance, certainly do not yield a “sequence of events.” However, we find that plots do exist in Markson’s work:
Pliny the Younger was a pupil of Quintilian’s.
Years afterward, learning that Quintilian could not afford a proper dowry for his daughter, Pliny sent the money as a gift. (
VP
, 49)
E. E. Cummings died after chopping firewood. (
VP
, 106)
Voltaire’s corpse had to be secretly driven out of Paris — sitting upright in a carriage — to be given a Christian burial. (
VP,
177)
Things happen in these quotes; perhaps they happen in miniature, as separate, tiny plots or sequences of action, but these are plots nonetheless, such as: A.) Cummings went out to chop wood and B.) He died.
In both their brevity and their self-contained completeness they are reminiscent of Félix Fénéon’s early 20th century Novels in Three Lines, each “novel” a tiny summary of a news story taken from the Paris daily newspaper, Le Matin, in 1906:
Le Douz, a sailor, attempted to strangle Mme Favennec, 70, of Brest. When arrested he claimed to remember nothing.
At Saint-Anne beach, in Finistere, two swimmers were drowning. Another swimmer went to help. Finally, M. Etienne had to rescue three people.
Incurably ill, M. Charles Bulteaux opened the veins of his wrists in the woods of Clamart and then hanged himself from an ilex tree. (Fénéon, 49)
Although Fénéon’s “novels” do not hang together in the complex, subtly interactive way Markson’s fragments do, Luc Sante, in the introduction to the new edition of Novels in Three Lines (New York Review of Books, 2007), sounds as though he could be talking about Markson when he describes Fénéon’s miniscule novels:
They demonstrate in miniature his epigrammatic flair, his exquisite timing, his pinpoint precision of language, his exceedingly dry humor, his calculated effrontery, his tenderness and cruelty, his contained outrage. His politics, his aesthetics, his curiosity and sympathy are all on view, albeit applied with tweezers and delineated with a single-hair brush. And they depict the France of 1906 in its full breadth, on a canvas of reduced scale but proportionate vastness. They might be considered Fénéon’s
Human Comedy.
(viii)
Which leads us to consider Writer’s intention to write “a work of art without even a subject,” “with no politics,” and “no picture of society.” Do Markson’s books adhere to this guideline, at least?
On the foul influence of religion on human nature:
Burn down their synagogues. Banish them altogether.
Pelt them with sow dung. I would rather be a pig than a Jewish Messiah.
Amiably pronounced Luther.
I told you not to go with drunken goy ever.
Says the ghost of Leopold Bloom’s father. (
TINN,
156)
On poverty (as it strikes artists and writers most particularly) in The Last Novel:
The big tragedy for the poet is poverty.
Said Patrick Kavanagh.
Try to get a living by the Truth — and go to the Soup Societies.
Lamented Melville rather earlier. (
TLN,
132-3)
On the historical role of women in society, particularly in the world of letters (also from The Last Novel):
The greatest achievement for a woman is to be as seldom possible spoken of, said Thucydides.