This is not a novel

A collection of aphorisms dealing with the lives and (mainly) deaths of artists. Not a narrative so not a novel in that sense. The writer is present in the background and suggests it’s (among other things) a threnody, a fugue or a poem. Syntactic repetition is poetic. Highly allusive and cross referential. Sad and often funny. Considered rereading as soon as I’d finished it.