David Markson - This is Not a Novel

Conway, Massachusetts, Jack Chesbro died in.

Eliot died within months of her wedding, after catching a cold at a concert.

The kingdom of heaven, as described to Rilke by Marina Tsvetayeva after a lifetime of deprivation: Never again to sweep floors.

Pascal died of abdominal convulsions.

Valery died of throat cancer.

La Guerre de Troie riaura pas lieu.

But I always think as we tumble into bed Of little Willy Wee who is dead, dead, dead.

De Quincey was less than five feet tall. Hogarth was less than five feet tall. James Stephens was less than five feet tall.

This is also a kind of verbal fugue, if Writer says so. If still perhaps less than self-evident to the less than attentive.

B-flat Major, Op. 133.

The realization that Joan was not canonized until two decades into the twentieth century. Or Thomas More until 1935.

Jesus did not urinate or move his bowels, said Valentinus.

Erasmus died of dysentery.

Luther died of apoplexy.

Mordecai Anielewicz. April 19,1943-Nine rifles. Fifty-nine pistols.

These cool blond people make me feel uneasy, said Einstein. In 1914.

Does Dante want the reader to suspect that Ugolino ate his sons, or not?

I am getting on with my job, said Bernadette of Lourdes. What is that? Being ill.

Francois Boucher died at his easel at sixty-seven. Painting a backside of Venus.

You can never do too much drawing, Tintoretto said.

In a dramatic, not a narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and terror.

Nonetheless this is also in many ways even a classic tragedy, if Writer says so.

He is dead and gone, lady, He is dead and gone.

Don’t cheer, boys. The poor devils are dying.

As great an artist as ever lived, Mendelssohn called Jenny Lind.

The greatest singer of us all, Callas called Rosa Ponselle.

William Carlos Williams died after a series of strokes.

John Cheever died of cancer that spread from the kidney to the bone.

Woodlawn Cemetery, in the Bronx, Melville is buried in.

Woodlawn Cemetery, in Toledo, Ohio, Addie Joss is buried in.

Oh, Flask, for one red cherry ere we die!

Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by?

Disraeli was thoroughly convinced that Mozart was a Jew.

Cagliostro died in a dungeon of the Inquisition.

German beer music, Nietzsche called Die Meister-singer.

Sde Boker.

A. E. Housman died of a heart condition.

Shostakovich died of a heart condition.

Cafe Guerbois. The Bateau-Lavoir.

News that stays news, Pound identified literature as.

Hectic red.

Henry Adams died of a stroke.

Addison died of dropsy.

In search of Eldorado.

And of Ophir. Which, still, no one has ever discovered the location of.

Horace’s father was a manumitted slave. Chekhov’s grandfather was a serf.

Ivory. Apes. Precious jewels. Peacocks. Sandalwood.

Bangkok, Thomas Merton died in. After stumbling into an electric fan while wet from a shower.

Or on the other end of the scale even a volume entitled Writer’s Block— which Writer is willing to wager some petulant soul will have it.

Depraved May.

Zeno was a pupil of Parmenides. Who was a pupil of Xenophanes. Who was a pupil of Anaximander. Says Diogenes Laertius.

Kalidasa was the adopted son of an oxcart driver.

Yossele Rosenblatt. Jack Dempsey died of a heart attack. Nelson Algren died of a heart attack. Congreve died after a coach accident.

Why should we honor those that die upon the field of battle, a man may show as reckless a courage in entering into the abyss of himself.

Said Yeats.

February 23, 1821. July 8, 1822. April 19, 1824.

The calamitous last years of Swift: Labyrinthine vertigo, deafness, paralysis, aphasia, insanity.

Of Carson McCullers:

Stroke, paralysis, heart attack, breast cancer, brain hemorrhage.

Bertrand Russell, at seventy-six, survived an ocean plane crash in which a number of other passengers were killed.

I know death hath ten thousand several doors For men to take their exits. — Says Webster.

James Clarence Mangan. Who died of alcohol or opium or poverty or neglect.

And is alluded to a dozen times in Ulysses.

Giulio Romano.

Who is mentioned in The Winter’s Tale.

Bizet died of heart disease.

Hobbes died of palsy. At ninety-one.

Russell died at ninety-eight, of bronchial pneumonia.

Janacek died of bronchial pneumonia.

Scott died of the effects of a stroke.

No one ever lacks a good reason for suicide. Said Cesare Pavese.

The chimney smokes and I leave the room. Why do you think it a great matter? Asked Marcus Aurelius.

He was gone in time not to be old.

Said Henry James of Stevenson’s death at forty-four.

I have lived long enough: my way of life Is fall’n into the sear, the yellow leaf.

Smetana died mad. From syphilis.

James died of a stroke.

Gainsborough, on his deathbed, to Joshua Reynolds: Goodbye till we meet in the hereafter — we and van Dyck.

Shaw, Kipling, Housman, and Stanley Baldwin were among Thomas Hardy’s pallbearers.

Chaucer may have died of plague.

Sir Philip Sidney died of a sword wound in the thigh.

Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

Lautreamont died of tuberculosis at twenty-four.

Bonington died of tuberculosis at twenty-six.

Delacroix died of what began as a neglected cold.

Wittgenstein played the clarinet. Lowry played the ukulele.

Emmy Destinn died of a stroke at fifty-one. Toscanini, Puccini, and Caruso had all been in love with her.

Hie jacet Arthurus Rex, quondam Rex que futurus.

The last book Freud read before his death was La Peau de chagrin by Balzac.

The last book Kafka read before his death was Verdi by Franz Werfel.

A man without feet, walking on his ankles. Someone insisted having seen at Hiroshima.

There is no drinking after death. Say Beaumont and Fletcher.

We shall receive no letters in the grave. Said Johnson.

Samuel Richardson died of a stroke.

Henry Fielding died of dropsy.

There he stood, suffering embarrassment for the mistake of thinking that one may pluck a single leaf from the laurel tree of art without paying for it with his life.

And if thou wilt, remember, And if thou wilt, forget.

Georges Seurat died of what was probably meningitis.

Does Writer still have headaches? And/or backaches?

As from the start, affording no more than renewed verification that he exists.

In a book without characters.

Not being a character but the author, here.

Turning older or no.

Writer is writing, is all. Still.

Chi son? Chi son? Son un poeta. Che cosa facciol Scrivo.

The act of painting transforms the painter’s mind into something similar to the mind of God. Said Leonardo.

God, that other craftsman. Said Picasso.

I am God. Said Matisse.

— And who are you? said he. — Don’t puzzle me ;said I.

You are no a de wrider, you are de espider, and we shoota de espiders in Mejico.

Copernicus died of apoplexy.

Rimbaud died of cancer of the bone. Or of syphilis.

Farewell and be kind.

Say the last words of the original edition of The Anatomy of Melancholy.

Farewell as many as wish me well.

Say the last words of The Unfortunate Traveler.

El Greco was buried in a Toledo monastery in 1614. Four years later, for reasons not recorded, his body was removed from its vault.

To where, no one has learned since.

Did you ever see anyone die? Well, then I pity you, poor Severn.

Everywhere have I sought peace and found it only in a corner with a book.