David Markson - This Is Not a Novel

‘No one but Beckett can be quite as sad and funny at the same time as Markson can.’  – Ann Beattie

Deaths (more than 500); the obsessions and afflictions of a vast number of writers, artists and composers through the centuries; quotations of heart-stopping beauty – and Writer, making of these an echo chamber of the creative life.

‘First published in the US in 2001, Markson’s This Is Not a Novel finally waded across the Atlantic – courtesy of the enterprising CB Editions – this year. A swirl of unattributed quotations from other authors, an energising expression of readerly ennui and a meditation on mortality, it felt like a book one had unconsciously been waiting to discover.’
    – Geoff Dyer, Guardian Books of the Year 2010

‘Magnificent, a compilation that so exceeds the scatter of its parts that one must take some time to ponder why this should be . . . It’s almost impossible to stop turning the pages.’
      – Sven Birkerts, New York Observer

‘A daring tour de force (yet again), just the kind of novel only Markson would take on do with such uncompromising elan.’
      – Paul West

‘Reads as addictively as an airport thriller . . . masterful.’
      – Bookforum


David Markson (‘one of America’s most original voices’ – TLS) died in New York in June 2010. He had been making original, allusive, daring fictions for over four decades. His other books include Springer’s Progress, Reader’s Block and Vanishing Point. Wittgenstein’s Mistress (1988) was acclaimed by David Foster Wallace as ‘A work of genius . . . an erudite, breathtakingly cerebral novel whose prose is crystal and whose voice rivets and whose conclusion defies you not to cry.’
 


Publisher: CB Editions
ISBN: 9780956107336
Pages:  174
Binding: softback
Dimensions: 198 x 129 mm

Price: £7.99

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