When the world loses a great talent it seems we should pause, at least for a moment.
Little known to the general public, Markson was idolized by a core of fans that included Ann Beattie and David Foster Wallace. He was celebrated for his insights and for how he expressed them, often in paragraphs lasting just a sentence or two. "Wittgenstein's Mistress," his most acclaimed work, and other novels were interior monologues on the state of the world and the state of the author's mind. "Nonlinear. Discontinuous. Collage-like" was how he summed up his approach, in the novel "Reader's Block."
See also a 2005 interview at Bookslut. I shall be buying a copy of Vanishing Point to celebrate his memory.
