David Markson
American postmodern novelist / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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David Merrill Markson (December 20, 1927 ā c. June 4, 2010)[1] was an American novelist. He was the author of several postmodern novels, including Springer's Progress, Wittgenstein's Mistress, and Reader's Block. His final book, The Last Novel, published in 2007, was called "a real tour de force" by The New York Times.[2]
David Markson | |
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Born | (1927-12-20)December 20, 1927 Albany, New York, U.S. |
Died | (body found) June 4, 2010(2010-06-04) (aged 82) Greenwich Village, New York, U.S. |
Occupation | Novelist |
Education | Columbia University (MA) |
Period | postmodern |
Genre | experimental fiction |
Years active | 1956 ā 2007 |
Notable works | Going Down, Springer's Progress, Wittgenstein's Mistress, Reader's Block, This Is Not A Novel, Vanishing Point, The Last Novel |
Markson's work is characterized by an unconventional and experimental approach to narrative, character development and plot. The late writer David Foster Wallace hailed Wittgenstein's Mistress as "pretty much the high point of experimental fiction in this country".[3] While his early works draw on the modernist tradition of William Faulkner and Malcolm Lowry, his later novels are, in Markson's words, "literally crammed with literary and artistic anecdotes" and "nonlinear, discontinuous, collage-like, an assemblage."[4]
In addition to his output of modernist and postmodernist experimental literature, he published a book of poetry,[5] a critical study of Malcolm Lowry,[6] three crime novels, and an anti-Western, The Ballad of Dingus Magee, adapted into the film Dirty Dingus Magee, starring Frank Sinatra.[7]