“The Last Novel” by David Markson
The Last Novel
By David Markson
2007
220 pages
Fiction
—
I have seen exactly one episode of the sitcom Seinfeld in my entire life. That was the last episode, and I was there for the food and the friends, not the television. Needless to say, without several years of context, much of the supposed humor was lost on me. It struck me as violating the first rule of situation comedy: it ought to be funny ... and it wasn’t. It was, however, brilliant. The show was not full of jokes. It was a joke. It made fun of the self-absorption of its main characters, which had become the criticism of the program.
So in this last fiction review, I take the chance of turning the whole thing into a joke. Finnegan’s Wake by James Joyce is often described as the end of the novel. That is, after this indecipherable tome, there is no place left to go. The same might be said of Samuel Beckett’s Worstward Ho, which plumbs the outer limits of what language can do before lapsing into silence. (Yes, that Beckett. The Waiting for Godot guy.)
So for my 50th review, I cannot resist turning to The Last Novel by David Markson. The book was published in 2007, and Markson died in 2010. It followed similar works such as This Is not A Novel (2001) and Vanishing Point (2004). Markson defines the limits of the postmodern novel, which I know is not going to send many of you rushing out to buy it. Let’s let the writer define his own project: first from This Is not a Novel:
Writer is pretty much tempted to quit writing.
Writer is weary under death of making up stories. ...Writer is equally tired of inventing characters. ...
A novel with no intimation of story whatsoever, Writer would like to contrive.
And with no characters. None. ...Plotless. Characterless.
Yet seducing the reader into turning pages nonetheless.
Are we having fun yet? I have to admit he got me. I was turning those pages. But now from The Last Novel:
Novelist’s personal genre. In which part of the experiment is to continue keeping him offstage to the greatest extent possible – while compelling the attentive reader to perhaps catch his breath when things achieve an ending nonetheless.
How can a novel that is nothing but a string of factoids with very occasional intrusions in which we find the unnamed novelist is old and tired and alone and probably dying, be anything but a slog and a bore? Well, first of all, the factoids are endlessly interesting and not quite as unrelated as they initially appear. Paying attention to the historical and literary allusions pays off. What is harder to explain is how one can be moved by such a book. By the time I got to the last three lines I was on the verge of tears:
Old. Tired. Sick. Alone. Broke.
The old man who will not laugh is a fool
Als ick kan.
Is this all a joke or the end of the novel? Well, at the very least, it’s the end of these reviews.
