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partypete's review
4.0
the “novelists personal genre” is just gossip and trivia, but it’s a fun little read
escapegrace's review
5.0
This non-novel took me by complete surprise. The entire book is a collection of facts about and quotes from artists and writers throughout history, but at the same time, it's the tale of a man approaching the end of creativity. I carried it around with me for days, reading selections aloud to anyone who would listen.
blackoxford's review
4.0
Semifictional Semifiction
The Last Novel is a compendium of apparently disconnected facts, aphorisms, anecdotes, and assorted witticisms. Mostly these are about writers and other artists but also includes other notables like scientists and politicians. All are delivered in the best traditions of WC Fields and Henny Youngman as perfectly crafted one-liners. The effect is startling - as if Markson first wrote something of high literary density - like a Finnegans Wake or an Under the Volcano - and then stripped away all the narrative to reveal only the allusions and references that were embedded in it. What remains serves the same function as a Russian icon - pointing beyond itself to some other reality. Markson refers to this as semifictional semifiction in the text, an outstandingly accurate description.
Quite apart from the technique, the sheer scholarship required to produce such a work appears overwhelming to anyone less well-read than Markson, the presumed Novelist of the piece, who pops up sporadically throughout. Novelist is a witty magpie who collects only interesting, offbeat shiny things for his nest: pithy insults, fascinating oddities, intimate flaws, passing remarks, and little known biographical details from the lives of Dante and Shakespeare to those of Waugh and Vonnegut. Collectively these tidbits form a sort of cultural detritus which Novelist excavates layer by layer. The things we forgot we knew about and how these things connect to what we do remember seems the implicit story line.
Novelist particularly likes contradictions and euphemisms. “Gerard Manley Hopkins, on realizing that he feels a certain kinship with Whitman: As he is a very great scoundrel this is not a very pleasant confession.” And “He had not escaped the common penalties of transgressing the laws of strict purity, wrote Alexander Thayer re Beethoven. Which is to say — he had syphilis.” In fact most of his observations are ironic ( “Lenin played tennis”), although I don’t detect any sarcasm. He is an observer rather than a critic or a judge, as in “In an era when singers frequently embellished music to their own taste, Rossini once complimented Adelina Patti on an aria from The Barber of Seville — and then asked her who the composer was.”
Novelist creates fascinating grammatical constructions: “Wallpaper, George Steiner dismissed much of Jackson Pollock as.” And then resolves the tension this creates: “Extremely expensive wallpaper, Kenneth Rexroth made it.” This rivets the reader as if he’s riding a skittish horse which demands constant attention. Every step has to be monitored; and watching the twitching of the ears is crucial lest one miss the intention. The narrator admits to his apparent unreliability. “Novelist’s personal genre. For all its seeming fragmentation, nonetheless obstinately cross-referential and of cryptic interconnective syntax.”
I’m convinced that much of Novelist’s style is shaped by ancient Hebrew poetry. His repetition of a point with variations is typical:
“The sound of Bix Beiderbecke’s cornet:
Like a girl saying yes, Eddie Condon said.
The sound of Paul Desmond’s alto saxophone:
Like a dry martini, being what Desmond himself said he wanted.”
And the piece also frequently involves interesting reversals in which the reference is purposely ambiguous:
“One of the most illiterate books of any merit ever published.
Edmund Wilson called This Side of Paradise.
Not a lovable man.
John O’Hara said of Scott Fitzgerald himself.”
Novelist’s trains of thought are wonderful to experience:
“Latin, Greek, Italian, and German, George Eliot read.
Latin, Greek, Italian, and French — Mary Shelley.
Hindi, not English, Rudyard Kipling’s first language was.
People who pronounce the word ask as if it were spelled with an x.
As for that matter it was, until the late sixteenth century.”
Often the connections demand participative thought by the reader:
“The name Copperfield came from a sign Dickens had noticed on a shop in a London slum.
Chuzzlewit likewise.
Nothing but obscenities and filth.
Being all Conrad could find in D. H. Lawrence.
Disgust and horror, recorded Abigail Adams after a blackface performance of Othello:
My whole soul shuddered whenever I saw the sooty heretic Moor touch the fair Desdemona.”
And then, of course, there are the straightforward literary gags: “I come of a people who do not even acknowledge Jesus Christ. Why am I supposed to acknowledge Abstract Expressionism? Asked Jack Levine.” Or: “Good lord, Willie, you are drunk. Either that or you’re writing for a very small audience.” This could refer to William Faulkner or perhaps William Yeats; it’s probably better to leave it up in the air.
Novelist ends with a Flemish phrase - “Als ick kan”- which can be variously translated as ‘If I am able,’ ‘The best I can do,’ or perhaps simply ‘Perhaps’. In any case it’s tentative. The novel is billed as ‘Last’ but that can only mean ‘most recent’. Perhaps it’s simply a summary of Novelist’s knowledge of the world at some arbitrary point. And the same might be said of any interpretation of what Novelist has to say - only more or less recent; never definitive.
The Last Novel is a compendium of apparently disconnected facts, aphorisms, anecdotes, and assorted witticisms. Mostly these are about writers and other artists but also includes other notables like scientists and politicians. All are delivered in the best traditions of WC Fields and Henny Youngman as perfectly crafted one-liners. The effect is startling - as if Markson first wrote something of high literary density - like a Finnegans Wake or an Under the Volcano - and then stripped away all the narrative to reveal only the allusions and references that were embedded in it. What remains serves the same function as a Russian icon - pointing beyond itself to some other reality. Markson refers to this as semifictional semifiction in the text, an outstandingly accurate description.
Quite apart from the technique, the sheer scholarship required to produce such a work appears overwhelming to anyone less well-read than Markson, the presumed Novelist of the piece, who pops up sporadically throughout. Novelist is a witty magpie who collects only interesting, offbeat shiny things for his nest: pithy insults, fascinating oddities, intimate flaws, passing remarks, and little known biographical details from the lives of Dante and Shakespeare to those of Waugh and Vonnegut. Collectively these tidbits form a sort of cultural detritus which Novelist excavates layer by layer. The things we forgot we knew about and how these things connect to what we do remember seems the implicit story line.
Novelist particularly likes contradictions and euphemisms. “Gerard Manley Hopkins, on realizing that he feels a certain kinship with Whitman: As he is a very great scoundrel this is not a very pleasant confession.” And “He had not escaped the common penalties of transgressing the laws of strict purity, wrote Alexander Thayer re Beethoven. Which is to say — he had syphilis.” In fact most of his observations are ironic ( “Lenin played tennis”), although I don’t detect any sarcasm. He is an observer rather than a critic or a judge, as in “In an era when singers frequently embellished music to their own taste, Rossini once complimented Adelina Patti on an aria from The Barber of Seville — and then asked her who the composer was.”
Novelist creates fascinating grammatical constructions: “Wallpaper, George Steiner dismissed much of Jackson Pollock as.” And then resolves the tension this creates: “Extremely expensive wallpaper, Kenneth Rexroth made it.” This rivets the reader as if he’s riding a skittish horse which demands constant attention. Every step has to be monitored; and watching the twitching of the ears is crucial lest one miss the intention. The narrator admits to his apparent unreliability. “Novelist’s personal genre. For all its seeming fragmentation, nonetheless obstinately cross-referential and of cryptic interconnective syntax.”
I’m convinced that much of Novelist’s style is shaped by ancient Hebrew poetry. His repetition of a point with variations is typical:
“The sound of Bix Beiderbecke’s cornet:
Like a girl saying yes, Eddie Condon said.
The sound of Paul Desmond’s alto saxophone:
Like a dry martini, being what Desmond himself said he wanted.”
And the piece also frequently involves interesting reversals in which the reference is purposely ambiguous:
“One of the most illiterate books of any merit ever published.
Edmund Wilson called This Side of Paradise.
Not a lovable man.
John O’Hara said of Scott Fitzgerald himself.”
Novelist’s trains of thought are wonderful to experience:
“Latin, Greek, Italian, and German, George Eliot read.
Latin, Greek, Italian, and French — Mary Shelley.
Hindi, not English, Rudyard Kipling’s first language was.
People who pronounce the word ask as if it were spelled with an x.
As for that matter it was, until the late sixteenth century.”
Often the connections demand participative thought by the reader:
“The name Copperfield came from a sign Dickens had noticed on a shop in a London slum.
Chuzzlewit likewise.
Nothing but obscenities and filth.
Being all Conrad could find in D. H. Lawrence.
Disgust and horror, recorded Abigail Adams after a blackface performance of Othello:
My whole soul shuddered whenever I saw the sooty heretic Moor touch the fair Desdemona.”
And then, of course, there are the straightforward literary gags: “I come of a people who do not even acknowledge Jesus Christ. Why am I supposed to acknowledge Abstract Expressionism? Asked Jack Levine.” Or: “Good lord, Willie, you are drunk. Either that or you’re writing for a very small audience.” This could refer to William Faulkner or perhaps William Yeats; it’s probably better to leave it up in the air.
Novelist ends with a Flemish phrase - “Als ick kan”- which can be variously translated as ‘If I am able,’ ‘The best I can do,’ or perhaps simply ‘Perhaps’. In any case it’s tentative. The novel is billed as ‘Last’ but that can only mean ‘most recent’. Perhaps it’s simply a summary of Novelist’s knowledge of the world at some arbitrary point. And the same might be said of any interpretation of what Novelist has to say - only more or less recent; never definitive.
daviddavidkatzman's review
5.0
The Last Novel is a quick, easy, charming, sad, profound, surprising, humorous, angry, erudite, critical, clever, bitter, energetic, thought-provoking, challenging, heavy, light, experimental non-novel.
Novel? Perhaps the title is satirical. He calls it a novel, which may be intended as a form of challenge to "the novel" or more likely a joke and a sarcastic one at that. It's a book, certainly. But novel? It's like trying to force a Mormon through a keyhole. Why make "the novel" take on the burden of the avant-garde? Just call it a book. It's non-narrative. The small snippets from the "author" inserted throughout what is otherwise a series of quotations do not make a novel. They make for...brief author-character quotations. Whether the "character" is the same as "the author" is a dead question. Pointless! This character accretes some attributes: he is a writer; he is poor; agèd; lonely. Bitter. It becomes fictionalized simply by putting it into a book that isn't categorized as autobiography. (And even then, any biography, auto- or not, is subject to the hypocrisy of memory, wish fulfillment, and the best intentions.) But so what? A few snippets of fictionalized self-expression buried within something more akin to Roget's Thesaurus do not make for a novel. But they do make for a fascinating text.
Last? The irony (or intention?) that this was his last book before his death (did he know he'd die before writing another?) adds poignancy to the author-character's quips. To some extent, the title also expresses the author's ego. The title resonates between irony and sincerity (After ME, there is NO OTHER!) The Last Novel is not the death or even the far end of the novel, so it doesn't work very well as an intentional statement that nothing further can be done to deconstruct the novel's form because frankly I think this book crossed the line into the world outside the novel space. The title's meaning to me weighs more heavily on the side of Woody Allen. Self-mockery through arrogant assertion.
99% of the content in The Last Novel is a carefully curated collection of quotations (perhaps paraphrased in some cases?) and anecdotes regarding diverse historical figures and artists. The subject matter generally circles around repeated themes, the primary ones that stuck out to me are: religion, racism, criticism, and the value of art. His position around racism? Opposed. Religion? Also opposed. Mostly focuses on the hypocrisy and absurdity of religion and religious dogma. Here he expends the majority of his critique on Christianity and Islam with, to my mind, Judaism getting a pass. Most references to Jews are as victims, anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust. There's plenty to critique in the world of the Orthodox and Israel, so I'm going to say he's a little soft on the Jews. Criticism? He works both sides of the fence here. He sometimes quotes artists who hate on critics (and himself presents a backhand slap at critics claiming that most who read The Last Novel won't even notice the occasional character-author insertions), but then he goes on to quote authors and artists themselves being "critics" and harshing on other creators. Many of these one sentence critiques are quite hilarious. So I guess the point is that criticism is great...unless it's against you!
The theme that stood out the most prominently was around the value of art (both literary and otherwise). I might even go so far as to say that, primarily, The Last Novel is an homage to art and a challenge to the value of art. The poignancy that flickers in the background of all the anecdotes is the sense that Markson is wondering if the struggle was worth it. Will his writing be a worthy legacy? What is the point of his art after his death? Sometimes the anecdotes highlight the great value that some of us find in art. And in other cases, his selections highlight how easily art can be forgotten, destroyed, or become irrelevant.
Let me acknowledge that much of the greatness of this book is borrowed interest. But ... again I say, so what? I've never read such a brilliant collection of brilliant quotes. It's all in the curation. Let's call it a remix of history. What follows is a selection of various anecdotes to give you a taste of the style.
Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice.
Said Cyril Connolly.
Man: But a little soul bearing about a corpse.
Marcus Aurelius says Epictetus said.
Now that a certain portion of mankind does not believe at all in the existence of the gods, a rational legislation ought to do away with the oaths.
Wrote Plato—2,310 years before an act of the United States Congress added the phrase under God to the Pledge of Allegiance.
The first priest was the first rogue who crossed paths with the first fool.
Voltaire also said.
Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost what if feels about dogs.
Said John Osborne.
As his once extraordinary fame in France's literary world faded, Chateaubriand also became extremely hard of hearing.
He only thinks he is deaf because he no longer hears himself talked about, Talleyrand said.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's addiction to morphine.
And/or ether.
A seminonfictional semifiction.
And with its interspersed unattributed quotations at roughest count adding up to a hundred or more.*
I have never been surprised to find men wicked, but I have often been surprised to find them not ashamed.
Said Swift.
The severest test of the imagination—is to name a cat.
Said Samuel Butler.
A reference to the good old hearty female stench, unquote.
Which Pound excised from Eliot's manuscript of The Waste Land.**
When a head and a book collide, and one sounds hollow—is it always the book?
Asked Lichtenberg.
Unlike most Italians, Joe DiMaggio never reeks of garlic.
Life magazine matter-of-factly took note of in 1939.
It's a terrible thing to die young. Still, it saves a lot of time.
Quote Grace Paley.
Chloroform in print.
Mark Twain called the Book of Mormon.
Thy labours shall outlive thee.
Wrote John Fletcher in lines dedicated to Ben Jonson.
Who spent his last years partially paralyzed and virtually alone—and in calamitous want.
*note Markson's own description of this book
**I hate The Wasteland. Reading it is like choking down a dust sandwich.
An impossible to categorize work, The Last Novel is thought provoking and such a fast read that you've no excuse for not giving it a try. Highly recommended.
Novel? Perhaps the title is satirical. He calls it a novel, which may be intended as a form of challenge to "the novel" or more likely a joke and a sarcastic one at that. It's a book, certainly. But novel? It's like trying to force a Mormon through a keyhole. Why make "the novel" take on the burden of the avant-garde? Just call it a book. It's non-narrative. The small snippets from the "author" inserted throughout what is otherwise a series of quotations do not make a novel. They make for...brief author-character quotations. Whether the "character" is the same as "the author" is a dead question. Pointless! This character accretes some attributes: he is a writer; he is poor; agèd; lonely. Bitter. It becomes fictionalized simply by putting it into a book that isn't categorized as autobiography. (And even then, any biography, auto- or not, is subject to the hypocrisy of memory, wish fulfillment, and the best intentions.) But so what? A few snippets of fictionalized self-expression buried within something more akin to Roget's Thesaurus do not make for a novel. But they do make for a fascinating text.
Last? The irony (or intention?) that this was his last book before his death (did he know he'd die before writing another?) adds poignancy to the author-character's quips. To some extent, the title also expresses the author's ego. The title resonates between irony and sincerity (After ME, there is NO OTHER!) The Last Novel is not the death or even the far end of the novel, so it doesn't work very well as an intentional statement that nothing further can be done to deconstruct the novel's form because frankly I think this book crossed the line into the world outside the novel space. The title's meaning to me weighs more heavily on the side of Woody Allen. Self-mockery through arrogant assertion.
99% of the content in The Last Novel is a carefully curated collection of quotations (perhaps paraphrased in some cases?) and anecdotes regarding diverse historical figures and artists. The subject matter generally circles around repeated themes, the primary ones that stuck out to me are: religion, racism, criticism, and the value of art. His position around racism? Opposed. Religion? Also opposed. Mostly focuses on the hypocrisy and absurdity of religion and religious dogma. Here he expends the majority of his critique on Christianity and Islam with, to my mind, Judaism getting a pass. Most references to Jews are as victims, anti-Semitism, and the Holocaust. There's plenty to critique in the world of the Orthodox and Israel, so I'm going to say he's a little soft on the Jews. Criticism? He works both sides of the fence here. He sometimes quotes artists who hate on critics (and himself presents a backhand slap at critics claiming that most who read The Last Novel won't even notice the occasional character-author insertions), but then he goes on to quote authors and artists themselves being "critics" and harshing on other creators. Many of these one sentence critiques are quite hilarious. So I guess the point is that criticism is great...unless it's against you!
The theme that stood out the most prominently was around the value of art (both literary and otherwise). I might even go so far as to say that, primarily, The Last Novel is an homage to art and a challenge to the value of art. The poignancy that flickers in the background of all the anecdotes is the sense that Markson is wondering if the struggle was worth it. Will his writing be a worthy legacy? What is the point of his art after his death? Sometimes the anecdotes highlight the great value that some of us find in art. And in other cases, his selections highlight how easily art can be forgotten, destroyed, or become irrelevant.
Let me acknowledge that much of the greatness of this book is borrowed interest. But ... again I say, so what? I've never read such a brilliant collection of brilliant quotes. It's all in the curation. Let's call it a remix of history. What follows is a selection of various anecdotes to give you a taste of the style.
Spoiler
Literature is the art of writing something that will be read twice.
Said Cyril Connolly.
Man: But a little soul bearing about a corpse.
Marcus Aurelius says Epictetus said.
Now that a certain portion of mankind does not believe at all in the existence of the gods, a rational legislation ought to do away with the oaths.
Wrote Plato—2,310 years before an act of the United States Congress added the phrase under God to the Pledge of Allegiance.
The first priest was the first rogue who crossed paths with the first fool.
Voltaire also said.
Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost what if feels about dogs.
Said John Osborne.
As his once extraordinary fame in France's literary world faded, Chateaubriand also became extremely hard of hearing.
He only thinks he is deaf because he no longer hears himself talked about, Talleyrand said.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning's addiction to morphine.
And/or ether.
A seminonfictional semifiction.
And with its interspersed unattributed quotations at roughest count adding up to a hundred or more.*
I have never been surprised to find men wicked, but I have often been surprised to find them not ashamed.
Said Swift.
The severest test of the imagination—is to name a cat.
Said Samuel Butler.
A reference to the good old hearty female stench, unquote.
Which Pound excised from Eliot's manuscript of The Waste Land.**
When a head and a book collide, and one sounds hollow—is it always the book?
Asked Lichtenberg.
Unlike most Italians, Joe DiMaggio never reeks of garlic.
Life magazine matter-of-factly took note of in 1939.
It's a terrible thing to die young. Still, it saves a lot of time.
Quote Grace Paley.
Chloroform in print.
Mark Twain called the Book of Mormon.
Thy labours shall outlive thee.
Wrote John Fletcher in lines dedicated to Ben Jonson.
Who spent his last years partially paralyzed and virtually alone—and in calamitous want.
*note Markson's own description of this book
**I hate The Wasteland. Reading it is like choking down a dust sandwich.
An impossible to categorize work, The Last Novel is thought provoking and such a fast read that you've no excuse for not giving it a try. Highly recommended.
lotusflower85's review
I wouldn't presume to rate something that appeared to me as more of just a list of random anecdotes, facts, and quotes. Some of these seemed to be in a natural progression, some had nothing in common except their placement in this "novel". I've never read Markson's work before, but Goodreads keeps telling me that I want to check out Vanishing Point. Maybe I will. But if all his work is like this, I don't think I want to know what the Goodreads Recommendation Algorithm thinks of my taste in books.
awashinfeeling's review
4.0
I highly recommend David Markson's The Last Novel to those who are in the mood for a 'novel' that is 'different'. Or for those who simply love postmodernist literature because this is as postmodern as they come. The protagonist appropriately describes The Last Novel as "a novel with no intimation of story whatsoever".
You could think that it is merely a collection of literary trivia, the Novelist's attempt to disguise his true self, his thoughts and his feelings. However, the protagonist drops a few hints here and there, which slowly reveal the inner workings of his mind. Moreover, the quotes he chooses to use highlight his concerns, his interests and his point of views.
It is a truly remarkable read and if you are a fan of literary trivia you are definitely going to love this one.
You could think that it is merely a collection of literary trivia, the Novelist's attempt to disguise his true self, his thoughts and his feelings. However, the protagonist drops a few hints here and there, which slowly reveal the inner workings of his mind. Moreover, the quotes he chooses to use highlight his concerns, his interests and his point of views.
It is a truly remarkable read and if you are a fan of literary trivia you are definitely going to love this one.
lisamquinn's review
4.0
3.5! I liked it - I just think bits of it went over my head. But I still found it very intersting.
zachkuhn's review
3.0
I learned that sometimes I really do want a plot, no matter how interesting the author's personal list of potant potables (or quotant quotables) might be. And that Mozart was bat-shit crazy.
bibliocyclist's review
3.0
"Next to the originator of a great sentence is the first quoter of it. Said Emerson."
"The next best thing to God. Edna O'Brien called literature."
"My music is best understood by children and animals. Said Stravinsky."
"I don't very much enjoy looking at paintings in general. I know too much about them. Said Georgia O'Keefe."
"It is never difficult to paint, said Dalí. It is either easy or impossible."
"Thinking with someone else's brain. Schopenhauer called reading."
"Not to be born is far best. Wrote Sophocles."
"Morningless sleep. Epicurus called death."
"I am no Einstein. Once said Einstein."
"The world began without man, and it will end without him. Said Lévi-Strauss."
"The next best thing to God. Edna O'Brien called literature."
"My music is best understood by children and animals. Said Stravinsky."
"I don't very much enjoy looking at paintings in general. I know too much about them. Said Georgia O'Keefe."
"It is never difficult to paint, said Dalí. It is either easy or impossible."
"Thinking with someone else's brain. Schopenhauer called reading."
"Not to be born is far best. Wrote Sophocles."
"Morningless sleep. Epicurus called death."
"I am no Einstein. Once said Einstein."
"The world began without man, and it will end without him. Said Lévi-Strauss."
dekeportable's review
1.0
Absolutely hated the half of this book I trudged through before putting it down. Apparently Markson is a "postmodern novelist" whose "work is characterized by an unconventional approach to narration and plot." Blech. Get it away.