This is not a tragedy : the works of David Markson /
The very first book-length study to focus on this seminal American author, This Is Not a Tragedy examines David Markson's entire body of work, ranging from his early tongue-in-cheek Western and crime novels to contemporary classics such as Wittgenstein's Mistress and Reader's Block. H...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English French |
| Published: |
Champaign :
Dalkey Archive Press,
2011.
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| Edition: | 1st ed. |
| Subjects: |
| Summary: | The very first book-length study to focus on this seminal American author, This Is Not a Tragedy examines David Markson's entire body of work, ranging from his early tongue-in-cheek Western and crime novels to contemporary classics such as Wittgenstein's Mistress and Reader's Block. Having begun in parody, Markson's writing soon began to fragment, its pieces adding up to a peculiar sort of self-portrait--doubtful and unsteady--and in the process achieving nothing less than a redefinition of the novel form. Written on the verge of silence, David Markson's fiction represents an intimate, unsettling, and unique voice in the cacophony of modern letters, and This Is Not a Tragedy charts Markson's attempts to find, in art and language, the solace denied us by life. "How much of myself is in there? It's all me. Especially in Reader's Block, all that personal stuff re: Reader and/or Protagonist, ex-wife, ex-galfriends, children, lack of money, isolation, messed-up life, and/or some items dictated by novelistic necessity--and of course there is necessary invention there also, e.g., a house at a cemetery--but even little items like a couple of yellow stones from Masada or a reproduction of Giotto's Dante--I plucked up whatever was ready at hand. Is that laziness, or is it what they speak of as using what one knows? Take your pick."--David Markson To Francoise Palleau-Papin --Book Jacket. |
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| Item Description: | Originally published in French as Ceci n'est pas une tragédie : l'écriture de David Markson. |
| Physical Description: | xxxvi, 319 page ; 22 cm |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references. |
| ISBN: | 9781564786074 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1564786072 (pbk. : alk. paper) |