Reader’s Block by David Markson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Hard Slogging

Reader’s Block, like its successor, The Last Novel, reads like a collection of author’s notes, random ideas that come his way which might be useful in a future narrative to be written by the subsequent Novelist Who pulls things together.

In Reader’s Block, Reader appears as a magpie collecting fragments of mostly literary opinion and gossip. Reader is rapacious and has no clear filter for what is relevant - a sort of literary omnivore - tittle-tattle, biographical detail, prejudices (particularly anti-Semitism), and apocryphal anecdotes.

Reader's companion, Protagonist (perhaps the prospective Novelist in reflective mood), presents questions about himself - his background, motivations, elements of character, etc. These are a sort of probiotic questions, preparing the mass of material for subsequent digestion. Presumably Protagonist is attempting to give some structure to Reader’s random acquisitions.

Perhaps because I read them in the wrong order, I found Reader’s Block less interesting and less witty than The Last Novel. The individual factoids were less impressive and the whole appeared a sort of groping in the dark for a theme. Perhaps that was Markson’s intention. Writing of any quality is a messy business.

If so, he captures the tedium of an author’s business exceptionally well. It’s undoubtedly a grind and a drone finding material and inspiration. But then there is a definite element of watching paint dry in observing Markson’s ironic portrayal of himself.

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