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The basic argument here is that Mr. Markson, by drawing on a definitive atomistic metaphysics and transfiguring it into art, has achieved something like the definitive anti-melodrama. He has made facts sad. For Kate's existence itself is that of an atomic fact, her loneliness metaphysically ultimat…

Mr. T. Pynchon, who has done in literature for paranoia what Sacher-Masoch did for whips, [...]

[...] "I EXIST" is the signal that throbs under most voluntary writing--& all good writing. [...]

A distinction of Frege, a Wittgenstein-era titan: to mention a word or phrase is to speak about it, w/ at least implicit quotation marks: e.g., "Kate" is a four-letter name; to use a word or phrase is to mention its referent: e.g., Kate is by default the main character of Wittgenstein's Mistress.

[...] Serious, real, conscientious, aware, ambitious art is not a grey thing. It has never been a grey thing and it is not a grey thing now. This is why fiction in a grey time may not be grey. And why the titles of all but one or two of the best works of Neiman Marcus Nihilism are going to induce…