This Is Not a Novel - David Markson

This may not be a novel, but it is a highly inventive work that drifts between fiction, non-fiction and psychological memoir. After what seems to be a circuitous route with characters, stories, quotes and anecdotes, the real meaning lies in the journey, not the destination. \nThis Is Not a Novel is a highly inventive work which drifts genre-less, somewhere in between fiction, nonfiction, and psychological memoir. In the opening pages of the novel, a narrator, called only Writer, announces that he is tired of inventing characters, contemplating plot, setting, theme, and conflict. Yet the writer is determined to seduce the reader into turning pages-and to get somewhere, nonetheless. \nWhat follows are pages crammed with short lines of astonishingly fascinating literary and artistic anecdotes, quotations, and cultural curiosities. This Is Not a Novel is leavened with Markson's deliciously ironic wit and laughter, so that when the writer does indeed finally get us somewhere it's the journey will have mattered as much as the arrival.\n