Laura Sims investigates David Markson’s conception of the novel:

In Markson’s Reader’s Block (Dalkey Archive, 1996), the narrator asks early on:

What is a novel in any case? (13)

To which he adds, musing on the work he anticipates writing, which bears a striking resemblance to Reader’s Block itself:

Nonlinear? Discontinuous? Collage-like?

An assemblage? (14)

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