The Last Novel

April 30, 2007
The latest engaging, indefinable work from Markson (Vanishing Point) proves to be something between a writer’s commonplace book and La Rochefoucauld’s satirically aphoristic Maxims. A set of absorbing factoids and musings—from and about a variety of literary and historical notables—comprise his narrator’s “last novel.” With a delight in experimentation, Markson manages to insinuate a sober narrative voice between and among the words of the greats. After a quote from Eugene V. Debs (“Nobody can be nobody”) comes a telling moment of clarification about his own text’s aim: “Novelist’s personal genre. For all its seeming fragmentation, nonetheless obstinately cross-referenced and of cryptic interconnectivity syntax.” Indeed, the quotations, separated by a poetic amount of white space, read smoothly one after the other. Most are only a few lines long, and they range from bons mots by famous writers (Rousseau: “The man who eats in idleness what he has not earned is a thief”) to the writerly non sequitur (“Napoleon was five feet six inches tall”). Old age, defeat and death emerge as leitmotifs, underscored by statements of the places and dates of various authors’ deaths, and, slowly, of the narrator’s own poverty and loneliness. Markson’s dark fragments are, paradoxically, a joy to sift and ponder.

April 1, 2007
Like Markson's "This Is Not a Novel" (2001), this work is not really a novel as such. The dying novelist produces a work that's "Nonlinear. Discontinuous. Collage-like. An assemblage." Or: "A novel of intellectual reference and allusion, so to speak minus much of the novel." Brain candy, literary bonbons, bon mots, and maledictions are loosely strung together with occasional glimpses into novelist's life and mind. Random selection: "Dreiser, years in advance, telling H.L. Mencken that he has already prepared his dying words: Shakespeare here I come./ Alan Turing was dead at forty-one./ You don't have a computer? So how do you write your books? You don't still use a typing machine?" Then there's this observation: "Hegel, asking Schilling's advice about a town to settle in, and listing his chief requirements: A good library and "eine gutes Bier"." L.M. Boyd (Mike Mailway) dies just before "Last Novel" is born. Coincidence? As novelist's thoughts turn more toward death, the strings coalesce, almost as a noose for an old crank we increasingly care about. Most people won't get this highly experimental work, but all medium to large academic and public libraries should buy.Jim Dwyer, California State Univ. Lib., Chico

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