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reason that it has nothing to do with literature, it becomes
clear that it has everything to do with literature.
After putting the book down, one is compelled to pick
it up again, not to find out what happens next, but to
re-enter the intoxicating rhythm.
“Frida Kahlo’s affair with Leon Trotsky.
Rilke was devoted to polishing furniture. Jackson
Pollock baked pies.
William Gaddis died of prostate cancer.”
It is significant that Markson tends to refer to highbrow
artists. The contrast with their more famous
achievements is relentlessly brought to the fore. We can
read this sort of thing all the time about popular artistes
on sites such as popbitch.com, but this contributes only
to our enjoyment of pop culture. It doesn’t shock and
resonate. In This Is Not A Novel, we can’t escape the
fact that all great art is produced by people who die,
while the work survives. A commonplace, of course,
but a brute fact that modern artists confront on a daily
basis. They ask, what is the point? It leads to frustration.
It leads to despair. It leads to Gray’s contempt
BUY David Markson books online from and
for the modern novel. Some might think Markson is
joining in with this contempt; ridiculing the pretension
of high art. However, the endless unspoken contrast of
absurdity and death with Writer’s evident fascination
with the works of art referred to, only re-emphasises
our uncertainty about what art is and what it does to us.
One thing is for sure though: the artistic and intellectual
achievements of the centuries did not come about
by repeating what has gone before. Writer writes:
“Writer has actually written some relatively traditional
novels. Why is he spending his time doing this
sort of thing? That’s why.”
Essentially, if pretentiously, genre fiction denies
death. The reader is cocooned from the world we call
real by sticking to the conventions of character and plot,
or at least by assuming that they constitute what we
call “the novel”. Genre fiction does not question itself
because it is the means to other ends. It may help us
through the day, but not our lives. This Is Not A Novel
is such for good reason. How Markson’s book helps is
something I have been asking myself. And the answer,
as I have just experienced, is in the asking. But maybe
this is not an answer. �
335
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