caption death_date death_place influenced birth_place influences notableworks birth_date period yearsactive genre image article_title education name occupation
david markson in september 2007 4 june 2010 greenwich village , new york david foster wallace , ben marcus albany , new york james william gaddis , samuel beckett , conrad aiken , dylan joyce thomas , fyodor dostoyevsky , william faulkner , malcolm lowry , '' '' , '' wittgenstein 's mistress '' , '' reader going 's block '' , '' this is not a novel down '' , '' vanishing point '' , '' the last '' novel '' , '' springer 's progress 20 december 1927 postmodern 1956 & ndash ; 2007 experimental fiction david markson.jpg david markson
 m.a. , columbia university david markson novelist
david markson

david merrill markson -lrb- december 20 , 1927 -- c. june 4 , 2010 -rrb- was an american novelist .
he was the author of several postmodern novels , including `` springer 's progress '' , `` wittgenstein 's mistress '' , and `` reader 's block '' .
his final book , `` the last novel '' , published in 2007 , was called `` a real tour de force '' by `` the new york times '' .
markson 's work is characterized by an unconventional and experimental approach to narrative , character development and plot .
the late writer david foster wallace hailed `` wittgenstein 's mistress '' as `` pretty much the high point of experimental fiction in this country '' .
while his early works draw on the modernist tradition of william faulkner and malcolm lowry , his later novels are , in markson 's words , `` literally crammed with literary and artistic anecdotes '' and `` nonlinear , discontinuous , collage-like , an assemblage . ''
in addition to his output of modernist and postmodernist experimental literature , he published a book of poetry , a critical study of malcolm lowry , three crime novels , and what 's been called an anti-western .
the movie `` dirty dingus magee '' , starring frank sinatra , is based on markson 's anti-western , `` the ballad of dingus magee '' .
