This Is Not a Novel

That much became clear right away. It is a book, however, and it can be found in the fiction section of the library (I suggest that you go there now and check it out). Yet it doesn't fit any of the usual categories: short stories, poetry, drama, biography. And it's fun to read, you might find yourself laughing out loud, so you know it's not history; sorry, that was a cheap shot. I guess you could call it "experimental" but what would that tell you?

Wee Willie Keeler was five feet four and a half inches tall.
Balzac was five feet two.
Schubert was five one and a half.
Keats was less than five one.
A hyena that writes poetry on tombs, Nietzsche called Dante. (This Is Not a Novel, p. 16)

The author is David Markson, the title is This Is Not a Novel, and this is another in a series of nonreviews of real books that somehow, inexplicably thrust themselves into my narrow field of experience and provoke a reaction. Sometimes a chain reaction, when I seek out more of an author's work, let it infiltrate my own work, bring it up in conversation, or prompt someone else to read it, succumb to its influence, and further run afoul of respectable behavior.

This is even a disquisition on the maladies of the life of art, if Writer says so.
Wanhope.
John Reed died of typhus. (p. 86)

And it goes on like that, in thoughtfully spliced-together lines of text about artists of Writer's selection, betraying his special interest in the Romantics, for example, his disdain for the Beats, his fascination with classical composers, the odd intersection of dark or light forces, diseases, and death.

As a Marine pilot in Korea, Ted Williams several times flew as Colonel John Glenn's wing man.
Sophocles played ball with great skill, it says in Athanaeus. (p. 144)

Are these weighty bits of trivia historically accurate? I'm inclined to take his word for it, just because they sound so good, and because Writer says so. Is it still fiction if all the artfully arranged pieces are factual?

Moliere was never elected to the French Academy.
Balzac was never elected to the French Academy.
Was it John Searle who called Jacques Derrida the sort of philosopher who gives bullshit a bad name?
I love the smell of napalm in the morning. (p. 110)