CFP for the First Collection of Critical Essays on David Markson
Experimental fiction owes an unacknowledged debt to David Markson. A pioneer in the modernist tradition of James Joyce, William Faulkner, and Malcolm Lowry, Markson is generally grouped with renowned postmodernists such as John Barth and William Gaddis. Credited with the creation of his own genre, Markson’s later novels employ a highly idiosyncratic method of combining biographical and historical material to accrete a narrative that is often devoid of traditional characters or plot. While the early novels (which he deemed “Entertainments”) demonstrate a mastery of conventional forms including the Western and pulp noir, the innovations of his later novels have attracted a small but devoted following who have proselytized for a wider readership.