The Last Novel by David Markson (Updated)

Having read Catherine Texier's New York Times book review of The Last Novel by David Markson, pointed out to me by Bright Stupid Confetti, the novel was ordered online and shipped to my house.

After reading 58 190 of 190 pages, I already know rereading will occur, as the pages overflow with interesting anecdotes.

Catherine Texier:

Markson calls this book “a novel of intellectual reference and allusion, so to speak minus much of the novel,” and thus this book accumulates anecdotal material arranged in very short paragraphs, each no more than three or five lines, sometimes as short as a sentence, separated by a simple blank line. These lend themselves to startling and sometimes hilarious juxtapositions.

For example, here are a few of my favorite paragraphs from pages 8, 30, 38, 49, 70, 134, 142 and 143.

No philosopher has ever influenced the attitudes of even the street he lived on.
Said Voltaire.

Tennyson was once so drunk at the end of a London dinner that he started to leave by way of the fireplace.

Huckleberry Finn was once banned from the children's room of the Brooklyn Public Library because - Novelist is quoting here - Huck said sweat when he should have said perspiration.

Henrik Ibsen was virtually never known to take off his hat without immediately combing his hair - having even glued a small mirror inside the hat to make use of when he did so.

No different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation.
Said someone on radio named Rush Limbaugh about American soldiers abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.
People having a good time.

Before the Euro, the portrait of Yeats on Ireland's twenty-pound note.
America's Whitman twenty-dollar bill?

Abortionists, feminists, gays, lesbians - all in good part responsible for 9/11, said Jerry Falwell.
I totally concur. Said Pat Robertson.

Fundamentalismbecility.

Having not yet completed The Last Novel, a full review I cannot write, but, I can recommend what I've read so far it as challenging and unique.

And I think Tennyson may have been a wizard.
Said Charles.