Vanishing Point: A Novel (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Author has finally started to put his notes into manuscript form..." (more)
Key Phrases: New York, World War, Henry James (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

With his seventh novel, Markson, an avant-garde favorite for works like Wittgenstein's Mistress, which David Foster Wallace called "pretty much the high point of experimental fiction in this country," proves once again that his trademark fragmental style yields boundless meditations on the mythologized lives of great artists and thinkers, as well as the somewhat hapless project of constructing and controlling a novel. Author, who began the book with two shoeboxes full of notes, only rears his head occasionally, to mention that he's a procrastinator, that he's "damnably tired" and physically clumsy "as if his Adidas had whims of their own," and that despite his best efforts to arrange his notes, he has no idea where the book is headed. Yet for all his supposed relinquishing of control, he's omnipresent and clearly omnipotent, steering the narrative into increasingly murky waters. As the novel progresses, he includes more and more references to the deaths of artists ("Devon, Jean Rhys died in," "Heidegger was buried in the same small-town German cemetery he had passed every day... eight decades before") and the book's quotes, once neatly attributed to anyone from Plutarch to Dorothy Parker, disintegrate in the latter half, not always attributed, littering the once sturdy narrative like so much detritus at sea. We are left wondering, as Author does, "Where can the book possibly wind up without him?" Striking, devilishly playful ("If on a winter's night with no other source of warmth Author were to burn a Julian Schnabel, qualms? Qualmless") and with a deeply philosophical core, this novel proves once more that Markson deserves his accolades and then some.
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From The Washington Post

How few of a story's details can one tell and still tell a story? David Markson's new novel, Vanishing Point, doesn't directly ask that question. It doesn't do a lot of things. It doesn't deliver a linear narrative -- no this happened, then that. It doesn't provide any hard biographical or situational detail about its main character-narrator (if a story without an obvious story can be said to have a narrator at all -- "compiler" or simply "subject" might be a better term). It doesn't even give him a proper name, referring to him only as Author. In other words, it 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.

This is what we know: "Author has finally started to put his notes into manuscript form." Inference: He's at work on a book. "Author had been scribbling the notes on three-by-five-inch index cards. They now come close to filling two shoebox tops taped together end to end." Inference: The project has been under way for some time. "Actually, Author could have begun to type some weeks ago. For whatever reason, he's been procrastinating." Inference: The writing's not going well, as writing so often doesn't.

As he did in his previous books This Is Not a Novel and Reader's Block, Markson builds Vanishing Point out of anecdotes -- in this case, presumably the stuff of Author's index cards. The bits and pieces appear to have little in common other than brevity and certain preoccupations: the quirks, failings and eccentricities of writers, artists and composers; art's strange but necessary tenure in the world. None takes up more than a short paragraph, and some don't even occupy a full sentence: "The world as perceived by Rimbaud: Full of grocers." "Every poet is a fool. Which is not to say that every fool is a poet. Said Coleridge." Some could be taken as inspirational: "For art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments' sake." Many more have a graveyard slant: "Glen Ellen, California, Jack London died in." . . . "I have wasted my hours. Said Leonardo at the end of his life."

"Obstinately cross-referential and of cryptic interconnective syntax" is how Author describes the work in one of his very few direct comments. "Probably by this point more than apparent -- or surely for the attentive reader. As should be Author's experiment to see how little of his own presence he can get away with throughout."

The human brain scrambles after pattern recognition; it's programmed to make sense, to make stories, out of the raw material given it. From the first page, the reader of Vanishing Point begins to look for connections -- to write the story that Author seems unable or unwilling to write. It's a meditation on the creative process -- no, on the quixotic nature of creative endeavor -- no, on the fallibility of greatness -- no, it's an extended memento mori. All are plausible explanations; none feels bedrock certain. If one just thinks about it a little harder, finds one more connecting thread, maybe all will become clear.

In less whimsical and generous hands, this could come across as an extended authorial tease, one of those I'm-smarter-than-you avant-gardist ploys designed to embarrass readers who want to draw predictable parameters of plot and character around every story. To Markson's great credit, he doesn't dismiss traditionalist expectations; he enlists them, inviting the reader to solve what amounts to a literary whodunit half-hidden in the anecdotal mosaic. What's up with Author anyway? Possible clues accumulate. "One reason for Author's procrastination is that he seems not to have had much energy lately, to tell the truth. For work, or for much of anything else." . . . "Actually, more than his persistent tiredness, what has started to distress Author lately is the way he has found himself scuffing his feet when he walks. But also the singular small missteps he sometimes unexpectedly takes. As if his Adidas have whims of their own."

Is it imagination that the stream of anecdotes begins to feel like a flood? Can it be meaningless that quotes from "Hamlet," particularly from Ophelia's mad scene, creep into the text? Is it a narrative vanishing point, or Author's own, that the title points toward? Those are the questions. The answers, dear reader, are yours for the taking, and a strangely delightful experience it is, too.

Reviewed by Jennifer Howard

Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint; First Edition. bound galley edition (January 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593760108
• ISBN-13: 978-1593760106
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #625,335 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Markson is a Master, February 21, 2004

By	Sean C. Flynn "Horror Buff" (Brookhaven, MS USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I picked up this book a bit apprehensively, being aware of Markson's experimental style of narration. How could this possibly be termed a "novel" if it is merely a collection of facts from literature, history, music, politics, philosophy and religion? On a foundation such as this, how can one build the basic elements of plot, character and setting? As I read the book, however, I found myself marvelling at Markson's unique skill and vision. The "Author" of the novel arranges his massive collection of information in such a way that the elements in question are completed in the mind of the reader, like looking at an incomplete picture and mentally filling in the blanks. By the end of the book, I was acutely aware of having been moved - remarkably by a superficially disjointed series of anecdotes. Like Author, I was unwittingly swept into the vaguely existant narrative and pressed together the covers with a satisfying sense of enrichment. The flawless blend of tragedy, humor, ambition and madness in the world of human creativity (and destruction) remind the reader of the pleasures and pains of being in touch with truth. Markson will be remembered for this one.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cult to Classic, January 27, 2004

By	Leslie H. Whitten "novelist" (silver spring, md USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

With "Vanishing Point," the amazing David Markson lifts himself from cult status to author of what should be a popular instant classic. This mysterious and awe-inspiring examination of a dying writer is a worthy companion to Joyce, Genet and Beckett. Its "Waiting for Godot" quality is invigorated by courage and introspection, its contantly renewed variety educates and deepens with each reading.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Link To The Past, April 20, 2004

By	alexander laurence (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

David Markson is one of the most well read and literary people I know. Conrad Aiken, Malcolm Lowry, William Gaddis, and Frederick Exley were among his friends. He is the author of Wittgenstein's Mistress, which Ann Beattie has called "An absolute masterpiece." He is also the author of Springer's Progress and Reader's Block. He has lived in Greenwich Village for almost fifty years.

Markson was a big reader of literary allusions and quotations. When he first read Under The Volcano, he wrote a fan letter to Malcolm Lowry. They met in Canada a while letter. Markson went on a personal crusade to draw attention to Lowry's work: "Which is why I wrote a master's thesis (at Columbia) on Lowry's Under The Volcano only four years after it was published, for instance, when nobody else had written anything except the original reviews, and so I had the allusions all to myself to dig out."

Markson was also the first person to give William Gaddis' The Recognitions its high rank also. He called it the most important American novel since Moby Dick? "Actually it was just a throwaway passage in an old detective novel I wrote," Markson confesses, "but there too it was only three years after Gaddis had published. I'm delighted, or even honored, when I'm still given credit for it.

Although he would give his right arm to have written The Recognitions, Markson is looks down at Gaddis' later work: "That business of the nonstop conversation, with all the repetitions and digressions and so forth that are supposed to be precisely like real life--except that art is selectivity, damn it. I read an interview where he talked about authorial absense, but what happens instead is that what he hopes will sound natural simply sounds faked. It's a gimmick, and it ultimately makes us infinitely more conscious of the writer than we'd ever be otherwise."

Markson has little interest in current fiction, although he occasionally reads it. His all-time list would include Moby Dick, Wuthering Heights, The Stranger, early Celine, The Sot-Weed Factor, Nightwood, The Ginger Man, early Beckett. He thought very little of Thomas Pynchon. "I've got an odd bias against him. I've always believed that it's a serious reader's responsibility to pick up on virtually any valid literary allusion--even though a shrewd novelist tries to bury such things too, of course, so that the context makes sense even if the resonances are missed."

Markson did read Infinite Jest when it came out, but would make no comment. He remarked "Most of your enthusiasm is for the major stuff just before your own time. But deep down I know, know, that there are books out there just as good as Under The Volcano or The Recognitions--and it's my own damned loss that I've misread them."