This is a review from the L.A. Times Book section on Sunday,
January 28, 2007.
Epitaph for a Tramp & Epitaph for a Dead Beat The Harry
Fannin Detective Novels By David Markson Shoemaker &
Hoard: 378 pp. $14 paper
DAVID MARKSON assured his place in literary history 20 years
ago with the publication of
"Wittgenstein's Mistress," a playful, dizzyingly intellectual
novel full of cultural references that managed the neat trick
of having narrative verve without a proper narrative
structure. The 1988 book, rightfully considered his
masterwork, marked a turning point for him by moving away
from the Faulkner-esque style evident in his novels "Going
Down" (1970) and "Springer's Progress" (1977) toward even
greater narrative minimalism, as seen most recently in "This
Is Not a Novel" (2001) and "Vanishing Point"
(2004). Markson's oeuvre demands careful attention from the
reader, but those who persist will be rewarded, if only by
experiencing the peculiar sensation of a mind stretched
beyond its usual limits to reveal a new network of
connections, great and small.
Before Markson became the author of what he terms
"semi-nonfictional semi-fictions," he was a struggling writer
with a master's degree from Columbia, a couple of years'
worth of reading slush-pile entries at Dell and Lion Books
(two of the top pulp-fiction publishers of the postwar era),
and several novels nowhere near completion. "I was always the
person who was going to write 'Wittgenstein' and the others,
but at that earlier juncture, I simply wasn't getting it
done," Markson remarked in a 2005 interview. To support
himself, he relied on his acquired knowledge of the
conventions of crime fiction to concoct three of what he
calls
"entertainments" that were originally published by his first
employer, Dell.
The first two of these novels are now back in print in a
single volume recently reissued by Markson's current
publisher, Shoemaker & Hoard, inviting the question of
whether his ventures into genre territory are a legitimate
precursor to his later, more serious efforts. The answer, as
it turns out, isn't just a simple yes but rather an example
of how a prodigious talent makes restrictions work for him
and not vice versa.
One need only look at the opening paragraph of
"Epitaph for a Tramp," originally published in 1959, to see
that Markson operates on a higher, brainier plane than most
of his fellow pulp travelers. "You know how hot the nights
can get in New York in August, when everybody suffers - like
the vagrants in the doorways along Third Avenue without any
ice for their muscatel? Or all the needy, underprivileged
call girls with no fresh-air fund to get them away from the
city streets for the summer?" Right away, and with the
choicest of details, Markson catapults the reader into the
singular voice of Harry Fannin, an Upper East Side-dwelling
private detective with shrapnel in nearly every major part of
his body and a sense of humor that is equal parts sardonic
and introspective. By the end of this opening chapter, Fannin
is holding the freshly bleeding corpse of his ex-wife, Cathy.
That Fannin investigates the murder is a given; more
interesting is how Markson opts for the most personal of
motivations for his detective protagonist, deviating from the
Raymond Chandler/Dashiell Hammett formula into the territory
of Ross Macdonald.
Fannin returned two years later in "Epitaph for a Dead Beat,"
with crimes that are less personal - several young women
connected to a bohemian poet are murdered - but the novel is
more assured, thanks to its vivid depictions of the Beat
movement as a contemporary development and its stinging
satire of the publishing industry, eerily reminiscent of the
recent O.J. Simpson-Judith Regan debacle. "Yes, my little
confession ... I wonder how many copies it will sell - a
million, do you think? Surely, at least a million," wonders
one of the many aspiring, ambitious writers who turn up in
the novel.
Both books lead Fannin down seedy trails to illicit sex, drug
pushers and other shady characters who occupy Greenwich
Village. Cathy is as "promiscuous as a mink ... about as
discriminating as a hungry hound in a town dump." A brute
props Fannin into place "with all the effort of Pancho
Gonzales hoisting one for the serve." Colorful details
deliberately distract the reader from the plots, which are
workmanlike at best - clearly the result of Markson's
disinterest in crime novel mechanics. He's too busy peppering
"Tramp" with seeds of themes and subject matter he would
grapple with in his literary works: baseball
(Fannin ponders "what the Red Sox would do for base hits when
Ted Williams finally quit"), bad puns ("Zen Buddhism" becomes
"Zen Bedism" and then "Zen Nudism"), the writer's struggle
for relevance and the artist's relationship to creative
pursuits. He also makes a stunning array of literary
allusions and cultural references; many names - including
Modigliani, Akhmatova, Callas and Mansfield - figure
prominently in "Wittgenstein" and later works.
"Tramp" and "Dead Beat" provide intriguing snapshots of the
young author's thought processes. In "Tramp," he displays his
enduring admiration for William Gaddis' "The Recognitions" in
the form of an excerpt from a graduate student's term paper.
In "Dead Beat," Markson entertains himself - and, by
extension, the reader -with more bad puns, wordplay ("Percy
Bysshe Fannin, the Shelley of the Sherlocks") and even
backward mirror-writing.
More important, Markson gives his characters, especially
Fannin, surprising emotional depth often absent in the work
of his pulp contemporaries. The Fannin novels may not
be
"the best since Chandler," as the jacket copy declares, but
they hold up well nearly 50 years after their original
release and are fascinating literary curiosities for devoted
Markson fans and crime-fiction lovers alike.
Reviewed by SARAH WEINMAN
Sarah Weinman, a New-York based freelance journalist and book
critic, writes about crime fiction on her blog, Confessions
of an Idiosyncratic Mind.
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