Spotlight on ... David Markson 'This Is Not A Novel' (2001)

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Overview

'Though his books — including Springer’s Progress (1977), Wittgenstein’s Mistress (1988) and This Is Not a Novel (2001) — were often admiringly reviewed, Mr. Markson was a novelist well known largely to other novelists. This was partly because he was a central figure in the Village writing scene in the 1960s, a frequenter of literary watering holes like the Lion’s Head, but also because he eschewed conventional novelistic forms and tropes. Like other experimentalists, he made the form of the novel, at least in part, its subject.

'Mr. Markson’s books expressed, both mischievously and earnestly, the hem-and-haw self-consciousness of the perpetual thought-reviser. He wrote mostly monologues, or at least the narration seemed to emanate from a single voice, though the books were not necessarily narrated in the first person. (The writer at the focus of This Is Not a Novel, for instance, is called Writer.)

'Mr. Markson did not much bother with character development or plot; nor, as his work evolved, did he care much for devices of organization like chapters, or even paragraphs. Rather, he built his books in nuggets and epigraphs, oddball observation by peculiar found fact, to portray the mind of the narrator, who was generally an artist in some state of mental distress.

'Mr. Markson excavated the history of literature and art for eerily resonant and often amusing, petty or scandalous tidbits of biography and juxtaposed them with declarations about the narrator’s state of mind. Such was the form of many of Mr. Markson’s books. And though readers who crave narrative may have been put off by them, reviewers almost always found themselves succumbing to what many referred to as a cumulative, hypnotic effect. His admirers included Amy Hempel, Ann Beattie and David Foster Wallace, who referred to Wittgenstein’s Mistress — a monologue by a female painter, evidently mad, wandering the globe as the last surviving person on earth — as “pretty much the high point of experimental fiction in this country.”' -- The New York Times


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Media


David Markson reads @ the 92nd Street Y


D.M. on drinking w/ Malcom Lowry & Dylan Thomas


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Further

'David Markson: Address Unknown'
David Markson: An Introduction
Buy David Markson's books
'An Author's Personal Library: Lost & Found'
David Markson Page @ Facebook
'A Passionate Reader: On DavidMarkson
'TINAN' Resource Page
Stephen Mitchelmore on 'TINAN' @ Spike Magazine
'TINAN' reviewed @ Salon
'TINAN' @ Goodreads


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Interview
from Bookslut

Is there something about people at the edge of sanity that appeals to you?

No, not at all, it's just inviting. What the hell, craziness is a lot more dramatic to handle than sanity. Which Dostoevsky proved all those years ago -- trying to write a book about a perfectly good person and it's the one volume among all his major works that's a total botch. Unlike all his others, filled with lunacy and suicide and murder, et cetera. Or think about ninety percent of all the literary protagonists we find most memorable -- Ahab, Heathcliff, Stavrogin, even all the way back to Don Quixote -- every one of them is certifiable.

Madness and religion do often get coupled too, as a literary theme -- in your work as well as in those.

It's much more symbolic than real, of course. When Fern lifts her hand in front of the blind infant and its eyes seem to move -- as if she's some sort of sainted prostitute out of old hagiography or some such. But of course it's just that she has turpentine all over her hands, from her painting, which I mention several times. I didn't do that in Wittgenstein's Mistress, I don't think, because I was too preoccupied with all the philosophy that's buried in there. Wittgenstein himself, but Heidegger also, though nobody's picked up on him. But with Going Down, yes, even if it's frequently a matter of local Mexican superstition rather than religious per se. I had a head full of it, after three full years in the country. Indeed, one of the loveliest compliments I ever got was from a bright Mexican gal who used to call me "el estúpido gringo" because my Spanish was so bum -- but when the book came out all those years later she said, "All you ever seemed to do down here for three years was drink, but damn it, you were paying attention."

You're something of a token underappreciated author. How do you feel about that?

Token, I love the word, yes. I seem to get written about that way, lately. Somebody sent me a clipping from the Los Angeles Times, and somebody else sent the same thing from The Chicago Tribune, about some bloggers banding together to promote authors they feel haven't reached the audience they deserve -- such as "the David Markson's of our world," or something like that. And then in the Times here in New York there was something similar, a passing mention of little-recognized writers, and naming me among them. One of my friends told me to be careful before I become well known for being unknown.

How does it make you feel, not being as widely acclaimed as many of us believe you should be? Is it frustrating?

Listen, you write the way you do because you have to, and because it's who you are. But nice things happen too, reputation or no. Just recently, for example, a letter from someone here in town, whom I don't know at all, wanting nothing, simply telling me that if I need anything -- if I want to say "lift this" or "move that" -- I should give him a call. Or someone else, saying that he's recently read Wittgenstein for a second time, and that he did it aloud, sitting alone in his apartment and speaking the entire book to himself, simply to capture the rhythms and taking two days to do so. Or then again, on a much more concrete level, at least two books about my work are being written that I'm aware of, and several essays or chapters in critical studies, and so forth. What more can someone in my position ask for? In some small way you're finally paying back the debt you owe to those books that moved you and got you started in the first place -- books like Lowry's, in my case, Willie Gaddis' The Recognitions, Joyce, any number of others. Or am I making all this sound precious, here?

(the rest)


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David Markson This Is Not A Novel
Counterpoint Press

'The novel, as a literary form, relies on a number of strategies to tell its story. Plot, characters, and settings are just a few of the formal qualities that we expect when we pick one up. But consider, for a moment, the word “novel” itself. It is ironic that what we call a “novel” is bound up in a relatively stable set of conventions which belie the novelty or newness its namesake suggests. It is this tension that makes David Markson’s This Is Not a Novel an ambitious and compelling postmodern work that makes one think about the process of reading itself.

'Markson’s text begins, “Writer is pretty much tempted to quit writing,” and from there the reader is presented with 190 pages of anecdotes, quotes, and the “Writer’s” comments on his own writing. As a whole, the book presents an interesting collage of the history of art and literature, peppered with artistic and literary obituaries like “Tennessee Williams choked to death on the plastic cap of a nasal spray.” This litany of figures is both humorous and depressing, considering that many of the writers and artists eulogized died miserable or unheroic deaths. When one considers the juxtaposition of the “Writer” who chimes in from time to time, it becomes clear that he acknowledges that he too will someday be added the catalog of the dead.' -- Davin Heckman, PopMatters


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Excerpt
borrowed from The Evening Redness in the West


Writer is pretty much tempted to quit writing.

Writer is weary unto death of making up stories.

Lord Byron died of either rheumatic fever, or typhus, or uremia, or malaria. Or was inadvertently murdered by his doctors, who had bled him incessantly.

Stephen Crane died of tuberculosis in 1900. Granted an ordinary modern life span, he would have lived well into World War II.

This morning I walked to the place where the street-cleaners dump the rubbish. My God, it was beautiful. Says a van Gogh letter.

Writer is equally tired of inventing characters.

Bertolt Brecht died of a stroke. Terrified of being buried alive, he had pleaded that a stiletto be driven through his heart once he was declared legally dead. An attending physician did so.

Mr. Coleridge, do not cry. If opium really does you any good, and you must have it, why do you not go and get it? Asked Wilkie Collins' mother.

William Blake lived and dressed in inconceivable filth, and virtually never bathed. Mr. Blake's skin don't dirt, his wife Catherine contributed.

When I was their age I could draw like Raphael. But it took me a lifetime to learn to draw like they do. Said Picasso at an exhibition of children's art.

A novel with no intimation of story whatsoever, Writer would like to contrive.

And with no characters. None.

The Globe Theatre burned to the ground on June 29, 1613. Did any new play of Shakespeare's, not yet in quarto publication, perhaps burn with it?

Albert Camus, on the one occasion when he was introduced to William Faulkner: The man did not say three words to me.

Nietzsche died after a sequence of strokes. But his final illness, and his madness, were almost surely the result of syphilis.

W. H. Auden was once arrested for urinating in a public park in Barcelona.

Frans Hals was once arrested for beating his wife.

Plotless. Characterless.

Yet seducing the reader into turning pages nonetheless.

No one was injured in the Globe Theatre calamity. One man's breeches were set on fire, but it is on record that the flames were quenched with a tankard of ale.

When Dickens shocked Victorian London by separating from his wife, it was Thackeray who let slip that it was over an actress. Dickens did not speak to him for years.

Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon.

George Santayana, reading Moby Dick: In spite of much skipping, I have got stuck in the middle.

Thales of Miletus died at his seat while watching an athletic contest.

But I knew that Monsieur Beyle quite well, and you will never convince me that a trifler like him could have written masterpieces. Said Sainte-Beuve.

Actionless, Writer wants it.

Which is to say, with no sequence of events.

Which is to say, with no indicated passage of time.

Then again, getting somewhere in spite of this.

The old wives' tale, repeated by Socrates, that Thales was also frequently so preoccupied with gazing up at the stars that he once tumbled into a well. And was even laughed at by washerwomen.

Jack Donne, the young John Donne was commonly called.

Oedipus gouges out his eyes, Jocasta hangs herself, both guiltless; the play has come to a harmonious conclusion. Wrote Schiller.

Verdi died of a stroke.

Puccini died of throat cancer.

Indeed, with a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Even with a note of sadness at the end.

What porridge had John Keats? Asked Browning.

What is the use of being kind to a poor man? Asked Cicero.

Bertrand Russell was so inept, physically, that he could never learn to make a pot of tea. Immanuel Kant could not manage to sharpen a quill pen with a penknife. John Stuart Mill could barely tie a simple knot.

The sixth-century legend that St. Luke was a painter. And did a portrait of the Virgin Mary.

Tartini's violin. Which shattered in its case at his death.

Insistently, Brahms wore his pants too short. Sometimes actually taking a scissors to the bottoms.

A novel with no setting.

With no so-called furniture.

Ergo meaning finally without descriptions.

André Gide died of a disease of the lungs. Rereading the Aeneid on his deathbed.

It was while they were making copies of the Masaccio frescoes in the Santa Maria del Carmine as young apprentices that Michelangelo criticized the draftsmanship of Pietro Torrigiano: Bone and cartilage went down like biscuit, Torrigiano would later tell Benvenuto Cellini. Re Michelangelo's nose.

The greatest genius of our century, Goethe called Byron. The greatest genius of our century, Byron called Goethe.

Ivan Turgenev, at nineteen, during a shipboard fire: Save me! I am my mother's only son!

Catullus, who loved a woman he called Lesbia, but whose real name may have been Clodia. Propertius, who loved a woman he called Cynthia, but whose real name may have been Hostia. Both, two full thousand years ago.

Gustav Mahler died of endocarditis.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline died of a brain aneurism.

A novel with no overriding central motivations, Writer wants.

Hence with no conflicts and/or confrontations, similarly.

Rudolph Kreutzer never performed the Kreutzer Sonata.

One of the ennobling delights of Paradise, as promised by Thomas Aquinas: Viewing the condemned as they are tortured and broiled below.

The friendship of Samuel Beckett and Alberto Giacometti.

Richard Strauss: Why do you have to write this way? You have talent. Paul Hindemith: Herr Professor, you make your music and I'll make mine.

Porto d'Ercole. Where Caravaggio died. Most probably of malaria. In a tavern.

Georgia O'Keeffe died blind.

I saw Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, played, but now the old plays begin to disgust this refined age. Says John Evelyn's Diary for November 26, 1661.

With no social themes, i. e., no pictures of society.

No depiction of contemporary manners and/or morals.

Categorically, with no politics.

Vulgar and dull, Ruskin dismissed Rembrandt as. Brother to Dostoievsky, Malraux called him.

For whatever reason, Jean Sibelius did not write a note in the last thirty years of his life.

Kierkegaard died of a lung infection. Or a disease of the spine.

Karl Barth's surmise: That while the angels may play only Bach in praising God, among themselves they play Mozart.

Theophrastus pronounced that flute music could cure sciatica. Not to mention epilepsy.

Alexander Pope died of dropsy.

John Milton died of gout.

Theophrastus said flute music would have cured that, also.

No one ever painted a woman's backside better than Boucher, said Renoir.

A novel entirely without symbols.

Robert of Naples: Giotto, if I were you, in this hot weather I would leave off painting for a while. Giotto: So would I, assuredly—if I were you.

Matthew Arnold died of a heart attack while running for a streetcar in Liverpool.

Among Dickens' children: Alfred Tennyson Dickens. Henry Fielding Dickens. Edward Bulwer-Lytton Dickens. Walter Landor Dickens. Sydney Smith Dickens.

Among Walt Whitman's brothers: George Washington Whitman. Andrew Jackson Whitman. Thomas Jefferson Whitman.

Elizabeth I, visiting Cambridge University, delivered a lecture in Greek. And then chatted less formally with students in Latin.

Thomas Mann died of phlebitis.

The likelihood that Anne Hathaway could not read.

Anne Hathaway.

The perhaps less than idle speculation that Columbus was a Jew.

Space is blue and birds fly through it. Said Werner Heisenberg.

Ultimately, a work of art without even a subject, Writer wants.

There is no work of art without a subject, said Ortega.

A novel tells a story, said E. M. Forster.

If you can do it, it ain't bragging, said Dizzy Dean.

Xenocrates died after stumbling into a brass pot in the dark and cracking his skull.

Brunelleschi had a temporary restaurant and wine shop constructed in the highest reaches of the Florence cathedral while building his great cupola—so his workmen did not have to negotiate all that distance for lunch.

Maxim Gorky died of tuberculosis.

Or was he ordered murdered by Stalin?

Baudelaire died after being paralyzed and deprived of speech by syphilis.

I was tired and ill. I stood looking out across the fjord. The sun was setting. The clouds were colored red. Like blood. I felt as though a scream went through nature. Said Edvard Munch.

Can only have been painted by a madman. Said Munch of the same canvas.

Pico della Mirandola, not yet thirty-one, died of an unidentified fever.

William Butler Yeats died of heart failure.

The day of his death was a dark cold day.

Leigh Hunt once saw Charles Lamb kiss Chapman's Homer. Henry Crabb Robinson once saw Coleridge kiss a Spinoza.

Lamb was in fact known to pretend surprise that people did not say grace before reading.

Horse Cave Creek, Ohio, Ambrose Bierce was born in.

Giorgione probably died of plague.

Ninon de Lenclos.

The solitary, melancholy life of Matthias Grünewald. Was he wholly sane?

Is Writer, thinking he can bring off what he has in mind?

And anticipating that he will have any readers?
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p.s. Hey. Stuff is just stuff on my end today. ** Misanthrope, Sure, my opinion on and no doubt kudos re: the new Pacific Blush will be forthcoming. Well, I suppose that play you saw doesn't sound to have been so very good, true. But maybe it was an experimental commentary on the unfeasibility of staging those books? On second thought, of course that's what it was! It sounds like it was amazing! ** Im not an asbo im your next Prime minister, Hey, man! Nice to see you! On iPhone, you can comment on this blog but you can't play the videos, but then again mine's an old fashioned 3G thing. Man, kind of a tough sell for me re: Cyndi Lauper. I still get waking nightmares from the 'Time After Time' and 'She Bop' songs/videos. Hm, okay, I'll take her off my imaginary witness stand and try her stuff again with fresh ears. What other pop have you gotten into? ** Rigby, Yeah, I don't think there are many Mexicans living in France, just people touring, and not very many of them either. I wonder what a the pop. figures are. I don't think I've ever once come across a French-Mexican resident. Weird. Oh, on the dismantling thing, I guess I meant when the escorts are all super posed in the their pictures, you get to undress their self-stylization as well as their bodies. So you get more bang for your buck or something. Honestly, I hadn't thought it out that much. I would literally take notes in porn theaters sometimes, but mental notes were more common. Oh, the notes were just observations on what I thought worked or didn't work in the porn and why -- the way it was shot, the performances, etc. I've studied porn a lot in relationship to my fiction. Trying to coopt ideas and aesthetic stuff. But you know that already, right? Strange and interesting to ask a writer what his writing is good at. Interrupting flow ... yeah, that's good. That's true and a good way to put it. Your writing also has this rhythm that's kind of lush and severe, and it kind of savages its subjects in this knowing and useful way, and it's very good at creating excitement in the reader's attention span, or in mine at the very least. I could go on, but that springs to mind. Make any sense? ** David Ehrenstein, Been reading bits and pieces about the Ronni Chasen murder. Very strange. ** Pilgarlic, It might be cool if someone started a horror movie franchise with Gacy as the Freddie/ Jason/ Michael equivalent. Dennehy was pretty good as Gacy. It's worth a watch. There's one scene where 'Gacy'/ Dennehy has just killed 'Robert Piest'/ an actor in his house, and he looks up at this bare lightbulb dangling from the ceiling for a moment, and then he says, 'Light'. It's a pretty great moment. ** Scunnard, Really nice thoughts on Brendan's stuff. That was a pleasure. Interesting: that flip you're trying to make vis a vis the Bataille influence. Let me know what results, if you remember. I'm okay. I just work on my novel and do almost nothing else at the moment. It's okay. No, I didn't know that tumblr site, but it's bookmarked now. Wow, I like it a lot, no surprise. Wonder who does it? Thank you a lot for that. Everyone, d.l. Scunnard points out a blog/site called 'if we don't, remember me', which I personally find kind of very mesmerizing. Hard to describe it in a word. Check it out. ** Bernard Welt, Hey. Email from me pronto. Yeah, I made scrapbooks full of collages re: my novels for years and years, and it's a very tough form to finesse, I think. ** Paul Curran, Hey, Paul. Yeah, I'm still hoping to get the novel completely finished in the next couple weeks. I'm not sure I can, but it's definitely not unfeasible. Really glad yours to hear yours is racing along too. Warmest wishes from my cockpit to yours. ** L@rstonovich, Hey. Those Kevin Cascell collages are beauties. Everyone, courtesy of L@rstonovich, if your appetite for collages isn't whetted, check out these babies by Kevin Cascell. They're quite something. And before you stop poking links for the day, our pal L@rstonovich has revealed that he plays 'skronk guitar' on the song 'Magnetism and Good Credit' by the legendary and legendarily underrated band Trumans Water, and you can listen to his skronking here. Me, I'll listen later, as per usual. Thanks for being such a whirlwind packed with presents yesterday, man. ** Killer Luka, Wow, it was like we had a bonus Annie Proulx Day in the comments arena yesterday. Actually, if you ever wanted to do an official APD, obviously that would be A-okay. Oh gosh, your mom and you are going to hate me, but, since you ran it by me and I'm an honest sort of fellow, I didn't really like that sample of her writing so much, gulp. It seemed kind of, I don't know, blustery and overwrought. Forgive me. I'm weird. But I'm still going to page through one of her books at Shakespeare & Co. and buy it if I'm grabbed. ** Daphne, Hey, Daphne. A pleasure to see you! Oh, yeah, I'm into blurbing your book. Can you send me it or some of it? My address: dcooperweb @gmail.com. I'm swamped until I finish my novel, but I'm close to doing that, and if the hopefully shortish wait is okay, sure. ** JW Veldhoen, Boy pussy giveth and it taketh away. ** Alan, I'm with you re: KL's sentences vs. AP's sentences based on that example. ** Michael_karo, Hey. Thurston's not an asshole at all, for sure. I've been meaning to ask you: Is Karo your real last name? If so, where does it come from, nationality-wise or whatever. Never run across it before except ... isn't there a maple syrup called Karo Syrup? Maybe not. Leon Russell is cool. There was a really good article on him in Mojo an issue or two ago that got me listening to him again. But I can't stand Elton John, so I'm sort of tiptoeing very slowly towards the chance to listen to that collab album. ** Pisycaca, Hey, M. I'm a combination of mentally exhausted and excited about finishing my novel. Not sad. I don't tend to get post-novel depressions because I tend to jump right into another project afterwards, and, in this case, I'll have to get on writing the new piece I'm doing with Gisele as soon as the novel is complete. Someone was just advising me to listen to No Joy two days ago. It must be a sign. I'm planning to. Thanks! Evita has always seemed really interesting. Shame about that Madonna movie. Yeah, I'm seeing Jamie Stewart tonight. It's a Former Ghosts gig, yeah. Oh, I don't know if you were here when I mentioned this, but Dazed & Confused wants to do a big piece that would be a conversation between Bradford Cox and me. They said we'd do the conversation next week, but I haven't heard anything of late, so I'm not sure if it's happening or not. But cool, no? ** Sypha, To me, NiN has always been one of those bands people get into on their way to finding more interesting and obscure music that operates in the same realm. But Reznor's an ambitious artist, and I do admire that about him. ** Steevee, I doubt you missed much, yeah. I hope you're feeling a lot better this morning. ** JoeM, My comprehension when reading French is a lot better than when I listen to people speak French. I don't know if that's related to the writing vs. speaking thing. Vince Taylor's influence was mentioned in that Bowie article too. As was the PJ Proby influence, as someone else here brought up. Yeah, nowadays he'd be a Congressman and a former Fox News fixture. ** David, Greetings, and thanks a lot. ** MANCY, Hey. Yeah, it'll be very cool. ** _Black_Acrylic, Safe trip back to Dundee today. The RealDolls proved to be too much for an article? I can easily imagine that being so. ** Kier, Great to see you, pal. ** The Dreadful Flying Glove, Good point about the cut/uncut thing. I hadn't noticed that. Maybe he has a trick penis. A renaissance penis. But you'd think he would have mentioned that. Oh, the blog's tonic expects nothing in return. Consider it your 2D, pallid Santa Claus. So, did you buy a one-way ticket? That must feel complicatedly exciting, if so. ** Andrew, Yeah, in Paris, the Emo-like haircut has been pretty much assimilated. It's getting hard to tell the jocks from the moodies. ** Shai W. Thanatos, Well, hello there. Hm, I don't think anything's crackin', not even my knuckles. I don't know Michachu and the Shapes. Wait, I think I maybe know the name. I'll test them out. Vegan bacon, yes. That cat should be put to sleep. Possibly. I'd need to understand the circumstances better. ** Colin, Hi, Colin! How's it going? The novel is struggling in my choke hold. I do lick it occasionally though. How's your work going? ** Nb, Congrats to you, us, eternity, infinity and beyond on hitting the halfway point. Splendid news, that. No iced tea of late for me. I need to get on organizing the Hard Rock Cafe mission. Maybe tomorrow. Yeah, maybe tomorrow. Oh, you're doing Thanksgiving in Texas, right? The timing can't be a coincidence. Man, I miss a lot of things about the US of A, but I do not miss Thanksgiving. Except for the mashed potatoes. I miss them. ** Bill, Hey. I'm assuming that you saw how Brendan gave you the address. It's not too far south of Santa Monica Blvd., to add some context. Why are you going to LA? Fun, gig, ... ? ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. My novel could be slightly more cooperative, but I can't complain too much. Fantastic about the impending post! Thank you! Loop: I've been meaning to revisit them. At the time, I thought they were kind of dull, but enough people reference them in interesting ways nowadays that I think I should reinvestigate, especially since, when I hear them in my head, they don't sound dull at all. ** Inthemostpeculiarway, I didn't get my nachos. I'm going to see if I can get them tomorrow. You don't know Xiu Xiu? This is the first Xiu Xiu song I heard, and it made me fall in love with them, and it'll probably either do the same to you or stop you at their doorway. I admire your day of cleaning. I need one of those, except mine is going to last a week, I think, given the shambles around me. Okay, your stalker sounds totally psycho. Like a real stalker. Like a Britney stalker. Be careful. Great tale and bit of dialogue, by the way. So, in your fiction writing, do you use people and situations from your life as characters and settings? I mean, because you write so very, very well about your life, and it does seem like a great strength you might want to use in your fiction writing too? My day: I really, really wanted to finish the fifth chapter yesterday, and I couldn't quite manage it even though I worked until after dark and drank coffee until I was jittery, and that upset me. I did finish it this morning, though. At the moment, the narrator has just realized that Didier's Emo makeover and cosmetic surgery was just his subconscious attempt to build himself an exact looking copy of his dead younger brother, and he has just suggested, not for the first time but more clearly, that making that copy has been the secret motivation behind and goal for everything he's done in the story/novel so far, and that everything the reader believed had happened was just window dressing, and that all the secret passages in the buildings and chateaus he has described are just stand-ins for the secret passages in his writing, which makes no sense now, but hopefully it will when you read the book. Otherwise, the publisher that's putting out the 'Jerk / Through Their Tears' book/CD suddenly wanted a piece of writing by me to go in the booklet component, and I both don't have anything ready and the booklet was made and designed to hold a photo sequence, period, so there was a little battle over that, but I think I won. There was also a stressful situation that arose with my American publisher yesterday, but I hope it can resolved, and I can't really talk about it at the moment. I needed to do laundry, but I didn't, oops. Food and cigarette intake were pretty normal. Half-watched some TV show in the later evening where a bunch of smart French people sat around talking about what a scumbag Sarkozy is in eloquent ways. Slept. That's all I have to show for yesterday. So, how is/was Thursday? ** Brendan, There was a whole of lot of love and praise around here yesterday, and guess who deserved it? ** Okay, hope I didn't miss anybody. Today the blog concentrates on a very awesome novel by the late, very awesome David Markson. Behold. Back to work I go, and I'll see you tomorrow.