This Is Not a Novel

Rating:
Summary: A compulsive read which is neither a novel nor a poem
Review: It was odd to read this, because of timing. I had just read Mark Salzman's _Lost In Place_, a memoir of his quixotic youth which addresses the human need to make a mark in the face of mortality and frailty, and the ultimate futility of that need. Then I pick up this. Same theme, just as overtly stated.

However, though this book is entertaining, erudite, and thought-provoking, it doesn't do the job nearly as well as Salzman's hilarious story. The conceit is ultimately pretentious, and its melancholy narrator isn't very interesting.

Rating:
Summary: A different way.
Review: Markson quotes a conversation between an unnamed critic and Picasso. Critic: You can actually draw so beautifully. Why do you spend all your time making these queer things? Picasso: That's why.

Some artists are driven to find a different way. The older I get and the more conventional stories I have under my belt, the more I crave the work of these artists, for whom the pursuit of strangeness is a powerful mandate. I don't mean the merely weird or ugly--I'm talking about doing something new, or else finding a way to uncover the oddness in ordinary life. Overfamiliarity with the world is suffocating.

THIS IS NOT A NOVEL is a sly book. It appears to be little more than a miscellany of notes from Markson's reading, mixed with a few stray thoughts on the nature of this book he's writing. By the third page we know that he wants it to be characterless and plotless, "yet seducing the reader into turning pages nonetheless." I, for one, turned the pages happily, borne along by the flow of anecdote. But gradually in became apparent that what I was reading, finally, was an odd meditation on the phrase "timor mortis conturbat me"--refrain line from a poem by William Dunbar, "Lament for the Makers" [15th C.] The fear of death disturbs me. This is a novel about a writer trying to shake of the chill of approaching death. A strangely moving work.

Rating:
Summary: leer life
Review: One assumes that fans of David Markson's work will not be too disappointed by this latest book. I was not, though I admit I prefer his other writings to this. The book is structured as a sequence of sentences, often anecdotes describing the creative habits and deaths of an artistic pantheon. Sure, some will consider the book pretentious, but part of its glory is the effort of the writer, the central character, if any, who seems to be more of a reader, Markson, perhaps, and who puzzles and tries to be reconciled with his own impending mortality. Aside from the bounty of names, here and there an uncommon star appears, this book takes less cleverness to resolve into a thoughtful experience than other Markson books. Most dazzling, to be sure, is the variant structure of declarative sentences, often taken for granted. Some structures are continued repetitively, others, strikingly, challenge the rhythm the reader establishes. The sequences have the potential to mesmerize the patient and weary the rushed.

Out of all of the books, anecdotes, and sentences a character of sorts appears, who is not terribly interesting, nor completely capable of engaging the world without thinking through reading. The book is filled with curiosities that will jog to recollection details from a life spent reading. For some it is important to criticize what this book is not. Certainly, the style and approach to the writing of this book does not differ radically from the author's others. Perhaps this one is more refined. Perhaps it is repetitive and parodic. I prefer to recommend its observant and playful stories and structures that emerge from the sentences.