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Kim, Young Hee. “David Markson’s This Is Not a Novel: A Deviation from Traditional Fiction Writing.” Studies in English Language and Literature. 43.2 (2017): 27-47. Directly denying its identity as a novel, David Markson’s This Is Not a Novel utilizes a varied assemblage of historical events, obituaries, anecdotes, and quotes to break away from the confined frame of fiction writing. This study aims at identifying and analyzing experimental narrative devices Markson employs to push the boundaries of a conventional novel utmost. On an axis of death motifs scattered throughout the book, he juxtaposes his own dilemma as a writer with insightful fragments of sundry facts and factoids, deliberately avoiding so-called proper elements of a novel. To convey the overriding themes of death and writing, he turns to a unique arrangement of phrases and witty word plays in this minimalistic writing, rather than depending on a well-structured plot and elaborate character development. In the process of reading the book, his readers get inevitably involved in writing their own version of a story, thus filling the vacant space between the lines that Markson strategically laid out. Participating in creating a whole new story this way, the readers save the writer from solitude and his fear of oblivion, and help him counterplot his predicament with exhausted replenishment. (Keimyung University)