The Last Novel Quotes

“Is T.S. Eliot the only poet one can think of who could have spent a year on his own in Paris at twenty-three—and managed to have no sexual encounter whatsoever?”
― David Markson, The Last Novel

“Trying to imagine E. M. Forster, who found Ulysses indecorous, at a London performance of Lenny Bruce—to which in fact he was once taken.

Trying to imagine the same for a time-transported Nathaniel Hawthorne—who during his first visit to Europe was even shocked by the profusion of naked statues.”
― David Markson, The Last Novel

“I like Mr. Dickens’ books much better than yours, Papa. Said one of Thackeray’s daughters.”
― David Markson, The Last Novel

“How miraculous it was, noted Diogenes, that whenever one felt that sort of urge, one could readily masturbate. But conversely how disheartening that one could not simply rub one’s stomach when hungry.”
― David Markson, The Last Novel

“A simple creature unlettyrde. Julian of Norwich called herself.

The most unlearned and uninformed female who ever dared to be an authoress. Echoed Jane Austen—four hundred years afterward.”
― David Markson, The Last Novel

“Was it Brigid Brophy who gave up on a certain Virginia Woolf novel when she discovered that Woolf believed one needed a corkscrew to open a bottle of champagne?”
― David Markson, The Last Novel

“The extant application for a reader’s ticket at the British Museum signed by Arthur Rimbaud on March 25, 1873, attesting that he has read the regulations for the Reading Room and that he is not under twenty-one years of age — when in truth he was still only eighteen.”
― David Markson, The Last Novel