this is not a column

After This is Not a Novel by David Markson

Dear Miss Lonelyhearts,

I’m very depressed and I feel like suicide is my only option. What do you think, yea or nay?

—Sad Sam Dear Reader,

Writers find writing about death equally as inevitable as death itself is.

Sylvia Plath died of her head being in the oven.

Neal Cassady passed while watching a lava lamp heat up on the stovetop. It put some glass in his neck, then he died.

On his deathbed, Franz Schubert thought what he wanted most was to read one of James Fenimore Cooper’s novels, then he died of syphilis. Franz Schubert dodged a bullet.

Beloved novelist James Fenimore Cooper died of dropsy.

This is not a tragedy.

Beloved nihilist Jean-Paul Sartre died of dropsy.

Charlotte Bronte died of brain inactivity, after re-reading a few of her novels.

Charles Dickens died of brain inactivity, after re-reading a few of his novels.

Herman Melville died of brain inactivity, after re-reading a few of Charles Dickens’ novels. Dear Miss Lonelyhearts,

About a year ago I had a devastating breakup with my girlfriend, and I’ve been down in the dumps ever since. But I met a girl recently who made me feel something I haven’t felt since my last girlfriend. I think I’m finally ready to love again, but I’m not totally sure. What should I do?

—Dumpster Diver Dear Reader,

“He is an insufferable moron,” said Wagner of Mendelssohn.

“I hate actors who quote Nietzsche,” said Charlize Theron.

Love seems to own both labor and the loss that belongs to labor. Being a possible grammatical longhand for the title of Shakespeare’s early comedy.

“Novels do not end with weddings, they begin with them,” wrote Tolstoy.

“Love is an ideal thing, marriage is a real thing,” Goethe reportedly said at his daughter’s wedding.

And, Writer would add, that Writer is an ideal thing, whereas writing is a real thing. What Writer creates becomes more real than what creates it (Writer), which at once comforts and dizzies Writer.

Christopher Marlowe died after he was stabbed in the face during an argument. Dear Miss Lonelyhearts,

My daughter was asked out on a date, and she really wants to go, but she’s only 15, and I’ve always told her that she can’t date until she’s 16. Her birthday is in a month. The boy seems nice. Should I bend on the rule and let her go, or hold fast to my rules?

—First Time Mom Dear Reader,

“There must be somebody there, because somebody must have said ‘Nobody,’” said Winnie the Pooh.

It is only with this kind of logic that Writer exists to Reader.

Marcel Proust may be of service here when we read: “Leave us pretty women to men with no imagination.”

It may be there Reader finds Reader’s answer.

Sherwood Anderson was undone by swallowing a toothpick.

Running through a stop sign: Nathaniel West’s final act.

“My neck is very short,” Sir Thomas More warned his executioner while resting on the block.

“Your questions will not be answered, rather, they will become irrelevant,” Camus reminds Reader and Writer. This is not an answer.

Dustin is working on an MFA at Georgia College. He has won prizes at The New York Times, Caesura, and Willow Review, and has published in The Journal, South Carolina Review, the minnesota review, New Orleans Review, Natural Bridge, Chattahoochee Review, Euphony, and so on.

For more work by Dustin Junkert, visit his page at our Online Sundries site.