David Markson (1927–2010)

Markson dedicates this novel, about a Bohemian gringo throuple unhinging in darkest Mexico, to Malcolm Lowry — but it reads like Lowry lobotomized, or maybe Lowry lampooned by someone overfamiliar with the baroque excesses of literary Modernism. I hated too many things to list, but I’ll try anyway:

– Spanish dialogue rendered in English, but marked as Spanish by leaving a random word (hombre, or borracho or just sí) untranslated. Or, even more infuriating, weird in-sentence show more self-translations like “perhaps nearby in the night came the xopilotes, the vultures” (this is supposed to be a Mexican person speaking). For most of the book the Mexican characters — either unknowable Indians or shady mestizos — are cardboard cutouts, but when we do get a glimpse of their inner lives they turn out, amazingly, to be even more clichéd within than without.

– Masses of tenuous literary-artistic allusions that are oh-so-unoriginal. Joyce, Eliot, Shakespeare, Van Gogh, Goya, give it a goddamn rest. Nobody in real life thinks or talks this way.

– Dialogue that reads like interior monologue — every utterance ending in an inconclusive em dash — and interior monologue distinguishable only because it’s in italics.

– Flashbacks that are only there so Markson can tick the “non-linear narrative” box on his highbrow novel bingo card, and a burglary scene that’s somehow both excruciating and superfluous.

– A handful of three-way sex scenes that, despite getting Kurt Vonnegut hot under the collar (based on his thigh-rubbing blurb), made me fairly certain that Markson wrote them with a dog-eared copy of “The Joy of Sex” at his elbow.

– A main character whose name is Steve Chance. Another character whose name is Talltrees.

– Dictionary-bothering vocab deployed more clunkily than a copy of the OED falling down the stairs: “The doctor’s voice fell, enclitic. For the moment, staring at him, Talltrees felt a curious sense of displacement himself, as if time were someway abeyant.”

I guess the redeeming features of this book were someway abeyant from me. I just found it, to use another of Markson’s pet adjectives, stercoraceous. Wittgenstein’s mistress is great though. show less

In 1951, David Markson, of eventual Wittgenstein's Mistress fame, wrote his 30,000 word master's thesis on Under the Volcano. Nothing substantive at that time, only four years removed from Under the Volcano's publication, had been written on it, except for, well, Markson's thesis. Lowry liked what Markson wrote about his novel. And the two became fast friends the final years of Lowry's life, and Malcolm, when he was sober enough, which unfortunately wasn't very often, mentored David show more Markson's then burgeoning literary/academic career.

In 1978, Markson went back to his old thesis, saw what was lacking therein, saw how much more he still had to say about the Volcano, and turned his master's thesis into a book of insightful criticism upon it.

Sven Birkerts writes a perceptive and incisive introduction to Malcolm Lowry's Volcano that gets to the real meat and bones of the Volcano's doomed protagonist, the Consul's -- Geoffrey Firmin's -- existential predicament, cutting through Firmin's cracked, alcoholic mask. Birkerts cites a question in an excerpt from a letter the Consul has composed, that not only sums up the Consul's philosophy, but undoubtedly Malcolm Lowry's philosophy too:

"Is there any ultimate reality, external, conscious and ever-present etc. etc. that can be realized by any such means that may be acceptable to all creeds and religions and suitable to all climes and countries?"

Birkert then responds to the Consul (to Lowry), with the following:

"It is the great question. What lies behind the phantasmic shimmer of the here and now? Are there larger meanings to be found? Can a mind haunted by intimations of connection survive the endless abrasion of living without that connection?"

I guess the answer depends on how whomever responds to the question defines "survive". I'd say that "haunted mind," quoted above, can survive, but "survive" by definition doesn't necessitate "living well". And that's the psychological, inter-relational crux of Under the Volcano: its poignant portrayal of a sad and squandered and profoundly disconnected life not lived well.

How do we, who've read the book, answer it's core cosmic question, "Can a mind haunted by intimations of connection survive the endless abrasion of living without that connection?" Can we live well alone? Can we live well when we're surrounded by so many people and yet so much loneliness and unhappiness and addiction retains its vice grip upon our lives? When we're, quoting the astute Neil Peart's (of Rush) lyrics, "Alone and yet together like two passing ships?" Can we?

I have read the book entire, Under the Volcano, and yet cannot answer the universal question it raises with much conviction either way; which is part of the reason I'd like to return to it again with David Markson as my guide leading me through, searching its pages for the answers, assuming they exist, socked away as they are in the labyrinthine mythology and allusions underpinning it. I'd also like to return to a closer reading of the Volcano because I know I missed a ton of those deeper meanings and layers, the story's symbolic and elusive substrata of coded data that Lowry so painstakingly applied to his classic narrative like the nuanced brush strokes of an impressionist's painting. Markson deconstructs each brush stroke he can locate within Under the Volcano, as he encyclopedically expounds his talents of linguistic, literary archaeology (or would literary volcanology be a better term?) exploring the Volcano's vast and mysterious -- and metaphysical -- chambers.

Markson claimed that next to Ulysses, Under the Volcano was the most myth- and symbol-laden novel of the twentieth century. So it's not just a book about a doomed self-destructive drunk, I think is the obvious message communicated by Markson's laborious analysis, though super-cynical or superficial readers, I suppose, could "read" the Volcano that way.

But, again, despite what it's many naysayers may say, Under the Volcano is patently not just a book about a drunk. It's not because the Consul, in Lowry's hands, has an uncanny knack for offering a tweaked -- yet prescient -- perspective of Day of the Dead events, even though he's constantly intoxicated, hammered on practically every page. The Consul eyewitnesses, watching the world through his cryptic, alcoholic lenses, an hallucinatory collage of culture and politics and faith and memory/sense perceptions swarming all around him, invisible to his cantina acquaintances (mostly the bartenders) and understandably exasperated ex-wife, that elevates him to sage-like status even despite his despicable failures of character. This strange and complexly flawed mystic man, Geoffrey Firmin, damaged yes beyond belief, beyond redemption, but still a man somehow, brimming over with eerie spiritual enlightenment his last day alive in Mexico; and David Markson shows us exactly how it's about that -- his transcendence -- and not just about some worthless drunk in a bar south of the border committing slow suicide literally 24/7.

What Stuart Gilbert first did for Ulysses, David Markson did for Under the Volcano. And neither accomplishments are small feats in the history of literary criticism. show less

I didn’t know what I was getting into when I decided to read this book. I knew it was no beach read but, still, . . . Whoa!

It was the title that got my attention. I’ve been a student of Wittgenstein for many years, and I enjoy seeing him and his work from odd angles.

The book is a long first-person flow, babble really for the most part. Memories, connections between odd facts and often mis-stated facts, usually corrected later (e.g, no, it wasn’t Archimedes who came up with the paradox show more of Achilles and the Tortoise, it was Zeno).

It’s a book made up of incidental remarks written by, “Kate” who we gradually get to know over the course of her babbling. There is no action, no dialogue, unless you count such things as made-up dialogue between Spinoza and Rembrandt happening to meet standing in line at an apothecary.

The babbling is Kate’s monologue. There’s no one else here in Kate’s world, except in oblique memories.

If there is plot tension, it’s a tension between meaning and meaninglessness. with meaning struggling to break through. Like Kate’s mentions of her child Simon that strike through the babble like sudden dischordant notes of hard punctuation. The feeling crashes through the distraction and then withdraws again.

The babbling is “language on holiday” although in a different sense than Wittgenstein meant by that phrase.

Speaking of Wittgenstein, what does all this have to do with Wittgenstein?

Kate’s world feels to me like a tangent world to ours, of limited dimension, made of papier mache rather than real objects. The things in her world fail to hang together — they are constantly being exposed as pale images of reality, incapable of supporting the web of connections that would make them meaningful.

The helpful Afterward by David Foster Wallace picks up on that theme. To him, the novel is a dramatization of the world of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. Objects linked together in logical connection via statements. Wallace expresses what he imagines to be Wittgenstein’s own repulsion from such a world, lacking in any depth or meaning by virtue of its logical positivist metaphysics, a metaphysics with no place for feeling or value, banished for their failure to convey facts.

In Wallace’s words, it’s “an imaginative portrait of what it would be like actually to live in the sort of world the logic & metaphysics of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus posits. This sort of world started out, for Wittgenstein, to be logical heaven. It ends up being (I opine) a metaphysical hell . .” And recognized as such by Wittgenstein. It’s a world spilled of its guts, leaving only its bones.

It’s an expression of a cold, factual, logical world at odds with Wittgenstein’s own life and ours.

If you’re not a student of Wittgenstein, you can still get the point. When you take out everything but the facts, the “enchantment” of the world, this is what you have. No place worth living.

Wallace also calls attention to the irony of the title. Wittgenstein, a gay man, after all had no mistress.* The title fails to refer, but, if Wittgenstein had a mistress, Kate might be her.

This is experimental fiction. Like I said, it’s no beach read. So prepare to work your way to what it means as you read it.

___________
*Although see Wittgenstein’s diaries, published as Movements of Thought, for more insight into his relationship (almost certainly unconsummated) with Marguerite Respinger. show less

***Spoilers***
When it comes to experimental fiction, no one outshines David Markson. David Foster Wallace revered him, and in a 1999 article for Salon.com, said of Markson's “Wittgenstein's Mistress:” a novel this abstract and erudite and avant-garde that could also be so moving makes "Wittgenstein's Mistress" pretty much the high point of experimental fiction in this country.

Much the same could be said of “Reader's Block,” written eight years later, as well. It is comprised of a show more disjointed mishmash of cultural and literary quotes and anecdotes. Interspersed with these entries is a running commentary on the nature of the book itself, as well as “Reader” trying to work out the details of a book he is having trouble writing. “Reader” is how the narrator sometimes refers to himself, which is explained by the introductory quote from Jose Luis Borges: First and foremost, I think of myself as a reader.

However, it is not all as simple as that, as narrator = Reader = Protagonist (main character of Reader's book.) This trichotomy of Markson's is exploited and explored thoughout the book, making for a fascinating conundrum of who is who.

With respect to what is what, as in what this book actually is, the narrator is not exactly sure.
Nonlinear? Discontinuous? Collage-like?
An assemblage?
And later:
A novel of intellectual reference and allusion, so to speak minus much of the novel?

Many of the entries have to do with isolation, mental illness, death, incest, the Holocaust, etc… However, the frequency of two particular categories far exceeds any others:
1.So-and-So was an anti-Semite
2.So-and-So committed suicide (sometimes going into detail, sometimes not.)

With respect to the first category, it is not altogether clear what Markson is striving for. Those he brands as anti-Semites run the gamut from Saint Thomas Aquinas to Dostoevsky, with scores and scores of writers, philosophers, artists and scientists in between. It is never stated why they could be called as such; all we have is just the statement that So-and-So is.

In addition, there does seem to be a preponderance of entries that deal with the Holocaust. So, is Markson saying that anyone he classes an anti-Semite would have approved of the Holocaust, thereby making them as much of a monster as the Nazi’s actually responsible? If so, this would in turn nullify any contributions they might have made (which, by the sheer number of those “outed,” would be a very large percentage of the Western canon—i.e. all of the books that narrator/Reader/Markson has enjoyed reading over a lifetime.)

However, not all is Holocaust and suicide. Many of the entries are just little tidbits he has picked up among the books he has read, and he often creates interconnections between them, sometimes playing them against each other to great comic effect. For example, in one entry, it is revealed that Mallarme learned English for the specific purpose of reading Poe. Then, five entries later, there is a quote from Henry James, who said, “an enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection.”

As for the book Reader is contemplating writing, he does not yet have a name for his main character, Protagonist, so starts trying on names of characters from famous books: Raskolnikov, Bloom, Mr. Kurtz, Mersault, Harry Haller, Molloy/Malone/Estragon, etc… He constantly shifts back and forth between them and others, and then back to just plain Protagonist as Reader tries to make up his mind. He never does.

Also changing constantly is the setting of the novel. Does Protagonist live in a house in a cemetery or in an isolated house on the beach? Both are explored, making up storylines to go with each, but again, he never settles on one.

What is Protagonist’s background? Having trouble creating a world for protagonist, Reader starts giving him scenes from his own life (having a son and daughter, having written books, etc…) Also, the statements of isolation (nobody comes, nobody calls, etc…), which are pervasive throughout the book concerning narrator and Reader are also projected onto Protagonist, further blurring the lines between narrator, Reader and Protagonist.

By the end of the book, all of the dark ruminations on isolation, suicide and death have built up to a deafening crescendo. The Protagonist is gone, being replaced by an elderly man (Markson?), and it is asked what if the elderly man in the house at the beach were to walk unremarkably into the ocean? Or if the elderly man in the house at the cemetery were to turn unremarkably to the gas?

The last line of the book:

Wastebasket

Wastebasket. What does it mean? Is the wastebasket where all of this nonlinear, discontinuous, collage-like assemblage should go? No, I don't believe so. I believe another conclusion has been arrived at: The world is a bleak, hopeless place where even the so-called giants of literature are really just monsters in disguise. For someone who has built his life around books, this is not a welcome conclusion. And so now all of the entries concerning suicide finally make sense.

Wastebasket.

Stand on the wastebasket and hang himself. Have I misread it? I don't think so. And what makes the ending even more of a punch in the gut is knowing that David Foster Wallace would certainly have read this book. show less