Vanishing Point - About the First Fifty Pages (December 2012)

[Casceil]

This thread is for discussion of approximately the first fifty pages of the book.

[Casceil]

The main themes that hit me in the early party of the book were about the nature and value of art. There are references to lost art (work painted over or burned), to the difficulty of "judging" art and how opinions vary, and the idea that to create new art an artist must sometimes break the mold.

The book opens with a quotation from Willem de Kooning:

"Every so often a painter has to destroy painting.
Cezanne did it. Picasso did it with cubism. Then
Pollock did it. He busted our idea of a picture all to hell."

Is Markson trying to bust our idea of a novel all to hell?

[Daniel]

That certainly seems to be his stated intent, doesn't it? And I'd have to say that it worked with me.

I can't remember where in the novel I noticed it (so apologies if this is too early to discuss), but one theme that stuck out for me was the criticisms of artists by other artists, and the mutual criticism of artists and critics. Some of these are just plain catty! And the effect is brilliantly mixed. Just because someone is wildly successful in the artistic world doesn't mean their opinion on the art of others is worth heeding. There really is no way to judge an artistic hit from a miss unless you rely entirely on your own personal taste or the judgement of time.

[Casceil]

It's a theme that runs through the entire book. Some of the funnier examples are later, but even in the first fifty pages we get comments like (from p. 35)

"in his comick scenes he is seldom very successful.
Said Johnson of Shakespeare."

In the early part of the book , though, we get more comments from critics.

For example:

"As if painted with mud. Hideous. Irremediable. Like the designs schoolchildren make by squeezing flies between the folds of a sheet of paper. Worse.
Being but a few of the more typical critical comments on Cezanne in the year before his death."

Or the critic who referred to Beethoven's Eroica as showing "Undesirable originality." p. 31

And, for anyone who has ever struggled through the later works of Henry James, like "Wings of the Dove:

"Rank vegetable growth, Rebecca West called the sentences of Henry James. One feels that if one took cuttings of them one could raise a library in the garden." (p. 32)

[Glenn]

Is all this talk of criticism and disagreement a preemptive strike against readers/critics who will not understand the author/Author's work?

I'm reading this book as a conversation between reader and author. Of course, this is what all literature is trying to do, but by leaving empty spaces between thoughts, the reader's involvement seems more explicit than usual.

So what is the author trying to tell the reader with this category of notes having to do with criticism and geniuses evaluating each other's work (often hilariously)

[Casceil]

That's an interesting question, Glenn. I'm still working on it. Another recurring theme is lost potential--children who died, collaborations that did not come to pass (e.g., p. 51, Dylan Thomas and Stravinski), inventions that had to be reinvented (e.g., moveable type, p. 51). There is talk about the value of art, and the value of life. ("Where they burn books, they'll end up burning people, said Heine. In 1821." p.38. I'm guessing we are supposed to be trying to make sense of the apparently random thoughts, looking for patterns, trying to understand. But your guess is as good as mine.