For our latest book-length message in a bottle, we present a greatly revised and expanded version of our experimental essay “Homage and Riff on David Markson’s Final Tetralogy” entitled The Last Vision.

The title of course is a portmanteau of Joseph Smith’s First Vision and David Markson’s Last Novel. Markson himself, the Jewish-American author most famous for his 1988 postmodern novel Wittgenstein’s Mistress, finished his life and career with a quartet of experimental novels—Reader’s Block (1996), This Is Not a Novel (2001), Vanishing Point (2004), and The Last Novel (2007)—that are each composed entirely of brief, non-sequitur anecdotes about famous authors and artists.

ShipsofHagoth here presents an homage and riff on this singular tetralogy, one that is primarily LDS in theme and scope, for this is also a faith singularly obsessed with the question of how much can be cut away entirely, which is arguably everything, “For all things must fail—”

Jack Smith is an obvious pseudonym, as vague and generic and Everyman as the name of Brother Joseph himself, and he would like to keep it that way.

The Last Vision is available on Amazon in ebook and in paperback formats.