Ladies and gentlemen, the NYTBR has a longass review this Sunday of David Markson’s The Last Novel. I’m stunned. Stunned, I say! Tanenhaus actually devoting pages to fiction off the beaten track? (To give you a sense of how earth-shattering this is, the last reference in the NYTBR to Markson involved an episode from a tell-all memoir.) Who would have thought?
I was kind of hoping that Markson would be kept a secret. I know that’s not very nice, and I’m sure that Markson could use the money, and he deserves to be read by more people, but…I don’t know, it’s just that, no one cared before, so why should they care now? it’s not like The NYTBR didn’t know who he was or wasn’t aware of Wittgenstein’s Mistress, Reader’s Block, This Is Not A Novel, and Vanishing Point. When I’m reading Markson I like to pretend that I am the only person in the whole world who at that moment is reading Markson. And now I can’t pretend that’s true ever again. Thanks NYTBR. Jerks.
it’s because new york magazine had that thing about it first.
When I listened to that cool indie band before they sold all the records, they were totally cool! And then their last album was popular among the kids. And I never liked them again! Guess there wasn’t much there to begin with!
Ed, Tanenhaus has probably heard through the grapevine about you moving to Brooklyn, and figures you’re going to start doing a Travis Bickle on him if he doesn’t ratchet up the fiction offerings.
I was kind of hoping that Markson would be kept a secret. I know that’s not very nice, and I’m sure that Markson could use the money, and he deserves to be read. . .
you are lame!
I was into Markson before anybody. He asked me to be his manager! Yeah, I used to feel that way about Nicholson Baker. Isn’t it odd? I had a similar experience recently with this seafood buffet that opened near my apt. It was so completely awesome that I vowed to reveal its existence to nobody, lest the place get overrun with Philistines. I guess everyone who chanced upon it felt the same way, because it closed a few months later.
Btw, did that review actually give away the final lines of the novel? Motherfucker…I’m still 20 pages from the end!
That’s why I only read my own shit, and don’t publish it. Best kept secret in the world.