Reader's Block

by David Markson

In this spellbinding, utterly unconventional fiction, an aging author who is identified only as Reader contemplates the writing of a novel. As he does, other matters insistently crowd his mind - literary and cultural anecdotes, endless quotations attributed and not, scholarly curiosities - the residue of a lifetime's reading which is apparently all he has to show for his decades on earth. Out of these unlikely yet incontestably fascinating materials...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1564781321
• ISBN13: 9781564781321
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
• Length: 194 Pages
• Weight: 0.61 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.3" x 8.3"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Experimental fiction that works

Reader's Block is a fiction, although not necessarily a narrative, of an author (Reader) determining the protagonist of his new work. (Potential) bits and pieces of the character, environment and history of the protagonist are interspered with 333 unattributed quotes of literary trivia. These quotes provide a repeating insertion of anti-Semitism into the fiction. Sound like an intellectual playground? Perhaps, expecially given the breadth in space and time covered by the quotations. However, this is a fiction that works - that keeps the reader interested in the text and provides a significant character study of Reader through the potential choices regarding the protagonist.

top notch

Thouroughly original, highly intellectual, and finally deeply moving -- an account of the persistent odd role of adversity in literary creation.

Looking for a new/ancient genre?

"Reader's Block" somehow manages to pick up where "This Is Not a Novel" left off, even though the latter was written later. This is managed by TINaN being more polished, more reader-ready, more "practiced," and is thus a good introduction to the genre; but Reader's Block is more true to the genre by being less "produced" and therefore more "honest." And yet, if you go back even further to "Wittgenstein's Mistress," the genre is exploited in the form of actual fiction-- biographical fiction, to be sure, but fiction nevertheless-- so that if one needs fiction as an introduction to the genre, one has it available, and again, Reader's Block will pick up where W'sM leaves off.I can't speak to still earlier works by Markson, but I can say the "adventurous reader," the literary equivalent of the day-walker who sets out in strange cities with nothing more than a bottle of water and power-bar, will enjoy the adventure of discovering this genre. "This Is Not a Novel" is the packaged tour; "Reader's Block" is the nitty gritty.Oh, by the way, the genre is called "zuihitsu." It's Japanese.

A great read

I anticipated a slow and perhaps even difficult read. Instead, I found Reader's Block to be one a the most purely entertaining novels I've read in a long time.So long as you aren't a reader enslaved by narrative expectations (as perhaps Reader, the central "character" of the novel, might be enslaved by narrative expectations?) this book is a literary joyride, a feast of anecdotes, details, ephemera, and hesitation.While I'm not sure the conclusion is, actually, as devastating as the blurbs would have us believe, it IS remarkable in its "resolution."I have recommended it to friends with great success, and I will surely continue to recommend it. I suspect that it has a much broader potential appeal than one would expect of such an experimental novel.

The best piece of American fiction in ten years.

If you read one book this year, read David Markson's new novel. Whether or not you've read any of his previous novels--which, by the way, represent one of the finest and most innovative bodies of work of the last thirty years--Reader's Block will astound you. A beautifully crafted condensation of language, Reader's Block is the poetic novel for century's end, recalling those great Modernist novels at century's beginning. Concerning the struggles of a writer named Reader, who tries to write about a character named Protagonist, Reader's Block is Markson's most refined example of his telescopic and allusive style. The reader enjoys an indelible language, told in terse, paratactic sentences, and it is my opinion that Markson has always written an absolutely tactile prose. I felt each word with my fingers. I found myself eating this novel. The book is also downright fun--for it is a collage of anecdotes from literary and art history, anecdotes that reveal the struggles of ALL writers and artists. This business of art is not a casual affair. Reader's Block is one of the purest books ever written, not a novel to taste but to ingest. We owe Markson everything, for he is more than gifted and we, struggling readers, are more than blessed.