Gossip, factoids, zero narrative (or some very small fraction of narrative). I liked this more when I thought it was a one-off, but now that I realize that Markson has several books just like this...i don't get it. ( )

This is not a novel. I'm not sure quite what it is, because I'm not sure how much of it is fiction. Maybe none of it. A collage-style memoir, maybe.

But I liked it. As promised, it kept me turning the pages.

And Markson's style is infectious. ( )

"Thought-provoking" is one of those words I use as sparingly as "breath-taking," but well, here we are. This book definitely isn't for anyone: it rewards minimum four years in higher education and includes all notable literary/artistic deaths by dropsy. It's a weird, rhythmic meditation on genius: latent, tormented and other. The formatting here kind of presages the weird Wikipedia effect of knowing a little about quite a lot, but beneath all the trivia is a story about someone working in earnest to make something meaningful, made all the better by the author's photo: "Hey, thanks for reading! Means a lot to me!"
( )

The onlyostensibly fictional character in this novel is Writer. 'Writer is pretty much tempted to quit writing,' the book begins, and scattered throughout it are Writer's thoughts on novels and writing, which eventually give way to personal information about Writer, information that the reader may already have gathered from the rest of the book.

And the rest of the book is a collection of baldly-stated facts, most of them about writers and particularly about their deaths, brief quotations, and mere phrases. None of these is random nor are they irrelevant to each other and to Writer's situation--in fact, the book is a marvel of organisation, despite appearances:

'Virtually every inadequacy in recent French literature is due to absinthe, Daudet said in the late 1800's.

Annals 165. Where Tacitus actually does, does, call a spade "an implement for digging earth and cutting turf".

Paul Klee died of cardiac arrest after years of enduring scleroderma.

Sarah Orne Jewett died of a cerebral hemmorhage.

Thomas of Celano.

I have wasted all my youth chained to this tomb.
Michelangelo protested to Julius II.

Why hasn't Writer ever known? What is the black liquid that spills out of the dead Emma Bovary's mouth?'

That's most of the page I chanced to open the book to and ought to give a perfect idea of what the writing is like. You could, I suppose, use it as a bedside book of trivia, you Philistine you, but in doing so you'd be losing the novel itself: There is a story here, though it's told in an untraditional way. And it's left me more keen than ever to read all that Markson wrote. ( )

I did read this mish-mosh of historical/literary details & interspersed commentary fairly quickly, in line with the description of it being a page-turner. However the book's inclination towards the random & obscure, beyond a focus on causes of death, is puzzling. ( )