On Your Markson

Just finished reading THE LAST NOVEL by David Markson, described in one otherwise praising review as "geriatric postmodern fiction." Damning praise, that is; the book is actually another vital narrative assemblage of literary anecdotes, sketches, fragments, and feuilletons by David Markson, which echoes and helps form the subtle trajectory of the "Novelist." This character is at once the author's alter ego but also a general cipher for the universal questing creator. The various shards and mini-annals elucidate the anxieties of literary legacy, mortality, the unusual fates of artists, the under-illuminated tensions at heart in artistic creation. Markson is a master and I hope his career belies the title of this wonderful book. I look forward to THE NEXT TO LAST NOVEL, out of sequence, adjacent to the last but after it, and continuing Markson's stunning literary achievements. CURLEY