Vanishing Point: A Novel

Markson's later works are - to my taste - riveting. There is a strangely hypnotic quality to the short, almost aphoristic phrases and sentences. This work and the other late 'novels' are not novels in the usual sense. Borrowing perhaps from Wittgenstein's style of writing in the Tractatus and the Philosophical Investigations, Markson creates a whole artistic vision from seemingly unconnected utterances. Many of the short statements are very emotionally powerful - largely due to their understatement. I had never heard of Markson until a friend directed me to him. What a find! Now, Markson's earlier works that approach more of a novelistic style fail to move me. You can see his evolution from somewhat connected narrative (albeit with seemingly disjointed sentences) into this more aphoristic style and by the late period you can see a very fine and mature artistic vision.

Cracking open VANISHING POINT, I was immediately reminded of my art school days... but not painfully so. While I rolled my eyes reading through the first 20 pages, I eventually gave in and allowed myself to enjoy the text. "Author" is a writer-to-be, a procrastinator, with an extensive collection of quick notes and facts, loosely surrounding the comments, actions, works, criticisms, and deaths of largely Western Civilization's writers, musicians, painters, and philosophers. Too scattered notes for any single text, most likely, but reading them over and over and over again creates a very hypnotic and satisfying experience. How someone can read Markson and not conjure up Thomas Bernhard, I don't know. WITTGENSTEIN'S NEPHEW vs. WITTGENSTEIN'S MISTRESS? Markson feels like counter-point to Berhard's insane genius. VANISHING POINT a response to CONCRETE. Berhard's protagonist Rudolph has also done extensive research. For a biography on Mendelssohn. Only he's unable to begin, needing the perfect opening sentence. Markson's Author has a collection of index cards consisting solely of, albeit poor, opening sentences. Where each sentence for Author is almost its own paragraph, Rudoph's entire rant is one long paragraph for 200+ vociferous pages. Each man is ill, if only in mind, and each man's procrastination and self-indulgent obsession ultimately points to his mortality. VANISHING POINT is a quick read. An entertaining, artful read. Perhaps not a must read, however. I must say giving the shorter, inverted bits ("Haarlem, Frans Hals died in.") the voice of Yoda made the book a bit more entertaining.

An acquired taste. I love Markson, have more than one tattoo dedicated to the man and his writing but he's not for everybody. His narratives don't make sense to some and he can be dismissed for being pretentious. However, he is a genius at experimenting with form and conveying emotions like loneliness and he can also be laugh out loud hilarious. I love Markson rather passionately and this book, like his others are a favor of mind though I view all he later experimental postmodern novel after WM as a single large book.

One can understand where David Markson was coming from when writing Vanishing Point. The idea is to have the author recede into the background of the novel as much as possible as a metaphor for a career coming to the end, but the end result is fairly slight, sort of like the leftovers from writing Wittgenstein's Mistress. It ends up being a minimalist list of facts regarding the twilight years of other well known artists, which while interesting as trivia, does come across as trivial. It's almost like the experiment here worked too well. The Author is too absent from the novel. I was expecting more. Perhaps showcasing the struggle of organizing the notes for a novel in some clever way. There were many possibilities here with this "behind the scenes" motif. That said, there isn't much that's wrong with the work. It's just a quicky diversion.

Excellent! Brilliant! A collection of thoughts, quotes, ideas, joined in a book in order to make reality a novel (which is the vanishing point). There is no novel, just the material (bricks) to make it work when the writer (who called himself "author") begin to write, something that doesn't happen yet. Every sentence has been carefully chosen and delivered. There is not a single page without something surprising, interesting, astonishing. Try it. It's more than a book, it's something beyond that.

David Markson has written this book 4 times, 5 if you include Wittgenstein's Mistress. They're all worth reading but this one is perfect. Markson uses quotations and literary anecdotes almost exclusively to paint a portrait of the author character. That may sound like a difficult read but it's not. It's actually a real page turner. In the ratio of wisdom extracted to reading time invested, this book is one of the highest (Gatsby maybe, Elizabeth Costello, Ficciones, around that level). What else do you want out of literature? I can't believe this is out of print, I've bought 4 copies of this because I keep giving it away to friends in the midst of drunken literary discussions.

It's been lunar years since I flipped through the musty pages of this once hallowed tome ...something to do with shoeboxes full of messy note cards and words that go bump in the noggin - most of what I garnered has long since vanished from memory- along with the book itself. But then, wasn't that the point all along ? Quash the Raven Nevermore an all that ....

Not really a novel but a collection of one or two sentences about authors, composers and artists and what these artists think about the world and think about other artists. Fast read, great fun.