Synopses & Reviews
In the literary world, there is little that can match the excitement of opening a new book by David Markson. From Wittgenstein's Mistress to Reader's Block to Springer's Progress to This Is Not a Novel, he has delighted and amazed readers for decades. And now comes his latest masterwork, Vanishing Point, wherein an elderly writer (identified only as "Author") sets out to transform shoeboxes crammed with notecards into a novel and in so doing will dazzle us with an astonishing parade of revelations about the trials and calamities and absurdities and often even tragedies of the creative life all the while trying his best (he says) to keep himself out of the tale. Naturally he will fail to do the latter, frequently managing to stand aside and yet remaining undeniably central throughout until he is swept inevitably into the narrative's startling and shattering climax. A novel of death and laughter both and of extraordinary intellectual richness.
Review
"[Markson] keeps up his near-single-handed effort to keep American prose fiction significant, deep, and subtle....[B]rilliant, high, fine, masterful, deep whether or not there remains an audience capable of embracing it." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"Vanishing Point feels a little like a literary Trivial Pursuit, or the associative stream of consciousness produced by a surrealist party game, and it's just as entertaining." Booklist
Review
"[The book] rejects most of the trappings of conventional fiction. And still it delivers more narrative satisfaction than any number of painfully observed contemporary-realist novels do." Washington Post
Synopsis
The new novel by the author of Wittgenstein's Mistress, Reader's Block, and This is Not a Novel.
Synopsis
From Wittgenstein's Mistress to Reader's Block to Springer's Progress to This Is Not a Novel, he has delighted and amazed readers for decades. And now comes his latest masterwork, Vanishing Point, wherein an elderly writer (identified only as Author) sets out to transform shoeboxes crammed with notecards into a novel--and in so doing will dazzle us with an astonishing parade of revelations about the trials and calamities and absurdities and often even tragedies of the creative life--and all the while trying his best (he says) to keep himself out of the tale. Naturally he will fail to do the latter, frequently managing to stand aside and yet remaining undeniably central throughout--until he is swept inevitably into the narrative's starting and shattering climax. A novel of death and laughter both--and of extraordinary intellectual richness.
Synopsis
An elderly writer (identified only as "Author") sets out to transform shoe boxes crammed with notecards into a novel, and in so doing will dazzle readers with an astonishing parade of revelations about the trials and calamities and absurdities and often even tragedies of the creative life all the while trying his best (he says) to keep himself out of the tale.
About the Author
Markson is the author of five novels, including Springer's Progress, Reader's Block, and This Is Not a Novel.