This novel is written in fragments. How does this technique affect the tone of the novel?

Markson's novel "Vanishing Point" does not conform to any traditional narrative structure. It does not have a coherent beginning, middle, or ending; it does not have a climax, a denoument, or even a central problem to resolve; it does not have characters or even a narrator. The closest the novel comes to a character is "Author," a would-be writer who has spent years collecting interesting facts and jotting them down on index cards to serve as fuel for the book he has never written. Author only surfaces fleetingly among the hundreds of notes, and always refers to himself in the third person, so it takes a few glimpses for the reader to begin to recognize him as the intellect behind all these seemingly-random facts.
The facts themselves seem unrelated at first, but gradually reveal themes which shed light on Author's preoccupations. He is fascinated by the lives and deaths of great artists. Acts of genius are summarized with a mixture of awe and envy, but Author notes that geniuses are not immune to poverty, disease, or madness. Odd trivia about the good and the great of history is mixed at random into more serious reflections on philosophy, bigotry, and the decline of society. Death is a recurring theme throughout Author's notes, and the reader learns that Author himself is elderly and rather frail.
The extremely limited information the reader can glean about Author from the notes influences the tone of the notes themselves. Why is this elderly man collecting these facts? What is their purpose? He wants to write a book, but has never managed to synthesize his thoughts into a proper text. He is in awe of artists who have overcome the "inspiration-gathering" stage and used their inspiration to create things. He is aware of life's brevity and afraid of wasting time—afraid, perhaps, that he has already wasted his time. The fragmentary nature of "Vanishing Point" enables the reader to sift through not just Author's notes for a book he hasn't written but Author's stream of consciousness as well. These are the things that matter to the elusive—the only—character at the heart of this novel.
Markson's technique is by turns compelling and frustrating, because the reader must build a narrative themselves from the fragile scaffolding of the handful of facts they have about Author. In the end, the reader is not so much reading a novel as reading Author's mind.