The inside front cover and first page of David Markson’s copy of Exiles by James Joyce:

     On which Markson wrote his name as an inscription:
     “DAVID M. MARKSON”

—

     I’ve said before that even though Markson’s copy of Exiles has no marginalia within it, it is still one of my favorite of Markson’s books that I own because it is my second favorite writer’s copy of a book by my favorite writer.

     And Markson thought as highly of Joyce as I do.

    But as Markson grew older, found it harder and harder to read fiction.

     “I don’t read fiction anymore. I read, but fewer and fewer novels.”
     Markson said in an interview with the Alexander Laurence from 1996.

     Almost ten years later, when questioned by Joey Rubin of Bookslut about whether it was true that he no longer read novels, Markson explained:
     “It’s true. Any fiction, really. I hate to admit it, and I don’t really understand it, but it’s some years now—it just seems to have gone dead for me. Not just recent stuff, but even novels that I’ve deeply cared about—I try to reread and there’s none of the reaction I used to get, none of the aesthetic excitement or whatever one wants to call it, all a blank. With one exception of course—I can always reread Ulysses. In fact I went through it twice, consecutively, just a few years ago. But hell, that’s not like reading a novel, it’s more like reading the King James Bible. Or Shakespeare. You’re at it for the language.”

     As he wrote of Joyce in his study on Lowry:
     ”Joyce, here, is the master, Ulysses the watershed.”
     - Malcolm Lowry’s Volcano: Myth Symbol Meaning, pg. 3 

     Pg. 111 of David Markson’s copy of Landscape into Art by Kenneth Clark:

     On which Markson placed two check marks in the margin next to following group of sentences:
     “Cézanne, when shown one of van Gogh’s pictures, said with characteristic brusqueness, ‘Sincèrement, vous faites une peinture de fou’; and looking at the latest Cypresses [Pl. 100] or the Ravine we must reluctantly agree with him. Expressionist art involves a dangerous tension of the spirit. We feel that Grünewald cannot have been entirely sane. But the frenzied writhings, the Catherine-wheel convolutions of van Gogh are further out of control than anything in El Greco, and are in fact painfully similar to the paintings of actual madmen.”

—

     The two ideas in the above paragraph that received the checkmarks are:
     1) Cézanne said of Van Gogh: “Sincèrement, vous faites une peinture de fou,” which roughly translates to: “Honestly, your painting is that of a madman.”
     2) That Grünewald’s sanity can also be questioned (albeit to a lesser extent than Van Gogh’s).

     The second of these two point shows up on pg. 11 of Markson’s This Is Not A Novel where he writes:
     “The solitary, melancholy life of Matthias Grünewald. Was he wholly sane?”

     The first of the points is mentioned in a nice digression of Kate’s in Markson’s wonderful Wittgenstein’s Mistress:
     “No wonder Cézanne once said that Van Gogh painted like a madman.
     At this rate the next thing I am going to ask is if my roses will still be red after it gets dark.
     On second thought I am not going to ask if my roses will still be red after it gets dark.
     Or even if Cézanne ever happened to talk to anybody about Van Gogh personally, before he said that.
     Which would naturally make his insight rather less than memorable, if he had.
     I mean if Gauguin had taken Cézanne off into a corner somewhere and muttered a thing or two, for instance.
     Or if Dostoievsky did.” (Pg. 154).

     In discussing this passage, Françoise Palleau-Papin writes:
     “If Kate poses the same logical problem when she contemplates her red roses, she reduces it to a symptom of her madness and refuses to consider the issue philosophically.”
     – This Is Not A Tragedy, pg. 212.

     Oh madness…
     Oh fragile sanity…
     I’ve discussed it here before, as it is a topic Markson frequently circles back to.
     Specifically I discussed it at length with respect to Markson’s Notecard Quartet (his final four novels) in the post I wrote utilizing the scan of pg. 187 of David Markson’s copy of The Failure of Criticism by Henri Peyre.

     In that post, after a long though undoubtedly incomplete list of mentions of madness in those final four novels of Markson’s, I ended with a great quote from an interview Markson did over at Bookslut where he was asked whether or not “there is something about people at the edge of sanity” that appealed to him, since he seems to write about them so often, and he responded:
     “No, not at all, it’s just inviting. What the hell, craziness is a lot more dramatic to handle than sanity. Which Dostoevsky proved all those years ago—trying to write a book about a perfectly good person and it’s the one volume among all his major works that’s a total botch. Unlike all his others, filled with lunacy and suicide and murder, et cetera. Or think about ninety percent of all the literary protagonists we find most memorable—Ahab, Heathcliff, Stavrogin, even all the way back to Don Quixote—every one of them is certifiable.”
     (And I’ll end it on that note again.)

     A postcard David Markson sent to me.

     On which Markson wrote:
     “Tyler, lad—                                                            18 March ‘10
     My God, you left out Willie Mays!
     Hey, again, thank you for the kind words, the kind offers, etc. Brief as this will be, I do appreciate all of same.
     And I guess I do get by without help—even with, would you believe, a busted wrist at the moment! (I do not advise it, at age 82!)
     Let me just wish you all the best of luck with your work. And, truly, sincerest thanks again.
                                                                                     Yours—Dave M.”

—

     Tonight, in celebration of being back writing Reading Markson Reading again, I decided to share with all my fellow readers (of Markson reading), my most prized Markson possession.
     It is not one of my many books once owned by Markson, with or without marginalia.
     Not his copy of Don DeLillo’s Mao II with “bullshit” written in Markson’s own handwriting in the margins on seemingly every other page.
     Not his copy of James Joyce’s Exiles which, though lacking in marginalia, is still one of my favorites since it is my second favorite author’s personal copy of a book written by my favorite author (even if it is my favorite author’s least interesting work).
     Not his copy of Conrad Aiken’s Ushant which has not only Markson’s own signature of ownership in it, but also an inscription from Conrad Aiken to Markson’s wife.
     Not his copy of Kurt Vonnegut’s Timequake, nor his copy of Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, nor his copy of Jorge Luis Borges’ Selected Poems, nor his copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Crack-Up, nor his copy of Dante’s Inferno, nor his copy of Homer’s Iliad.
     No. My most prized possession is a small little postcard he sent me in response to a letter I sent him.

     I wrote him two letters, actually.
     And I received two notecards in response.
     Both within just days of my having sent the letters. 

     The above scan is only the second of the two responses.

     One letter I handed to him when he made an appearance at the Strand upon the publication of The Last Novel in 2007. The other I sent just a few months before he died in 2010.
     This is the response I got on March 18th, 2010.
     He died less than three months later on June 4th, 2010.

     In the letter I sent him that prompted this response, I had created a short Marksonian list of monumental events that took place in New York City.
     Less monumental, actually, and more just peculiar.
     One such event I included, I remember, was when the Baronness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven punched William Carlos Williams in the face in 1921 for rejecting her advances.
     That is what Markson refers to when he says I “left out Willie Mays!”

     I had not included “the catch”—the infamous catch, one of the most memorable defensive plays in all of baseball history, which took place during Game 1 of the 1954 World Series between the New York Giants and the Cleveland Indians at the Polo Grounds in New York City.
     A “‘great’ catch” which Markson, in his review of Shay Oag’s book In the Presence of Death, wrote was followed by “back-slapping exultation.”
     My God, you left out Willie Mays!

     The rest of the note refers mostly to me offering to help him with anything if he needed it, to which he replied that he does “get by without help.”

     And then there’s the mention of his busted wrist.
     Dingus gestured vaguely with a hand that Hoke now saw to be bandaged, or rather it was the wrist.

     He was a sweet man to respond, and sweeter to have done so twice. And I appreciate, and will treasure, the fact that he wished me “the best of luck” with my writing.
     I had told him of the novel I’d been working on, but neither of us could know the other writing project that would announce itself to me only a few months later—after having found, stacked in miles and miles of books at the Strand, some of Markson’s own personal library. Neither of us could have known I’d be reading Markson reading, and blogging about it, such a short time after receiving this notecard.
     Quite sad.

     When I read the books of his I now own, and read what he wrote in many of their margins, I feel as though he’s reading with me, as though we’re discussing whatever book it is, as though he’s talking to me.
     But here, in this postcard, he IS actually talking to me. He’s literally addressing me:
     “Tyler, lad—”

     And that makes this my most prized Markson possession.

     (Someday I’ll share the other postcard he sent me a few years earlier—my other most prized Markson possession.)

     The first page of David Markson’s copy of Turner by John Rothstein and Martin Butlin:

     On which Markson placed his name as an inscription, in addition to the place and year presumably in which the book was purchased:
     “London 1967”

—-

     Wow, I’ve been gone for much longer than anticipated. In the meantime there’s been a crosscountry roadtrip, a break-up, a mugging, and lots and lots of work. I’ve been busy. I’m exhausted.

     But it is time for me to begin again. Exhaustion is no excuse…

     “David Markson’s novels always begin with exhaustion. Why write at all? The weather’s too hot; the narrator is tired, disillusioned, and down-hearted. Any effort being inane, any pursuit downright absurd, in particular the pursuit of meaning, how is one to live one’s life, how may one presume there might still be something worth writing about?”
     Wrote Françoise Palleau-Papin on pg. 3 of her Markson study This Is Not A Tragedy.

     I find myself in the same predicament.

     So I begin with exhaustion.

     And with a scan from an art book on Turner.

     And a lovely quote re: Turner from the beginning of Markson’s Wittgenstein’s Mistress:
     “I have always admired Turner as well, however. In fact his own paintings of water may well have been a part of what led to my decision.
     Once, Turner had himself lashed to the mast of a ship for several hours, during a furious storm, so that he could later paint the storm.
     Obviously, it was not the storm itself that Turner intended to paint. What he intended to paint was a representation of the storm.
     One’s language is frequently imprecise in that manner, I have discovered.
     Actually, the story of Turner being lashed to the mast reminds me of something, even though I cannot remember what it reminds me of.”
     (Wittgenstein’s Mistress, pg. 12)

     Pg. 15 of David Markson’s copy of Cervantes: A Collection of Critical Essays by Various (Ed. Lowry Nelson, Jr.):

     On which Markson underlined part of a sentence from Gerald Brenan’s essay on Cervantes, and then placed an X in the margins next to it:
     “Elderly, shabby, obscure, disreputable, pursued by debts, with only a noisy tenement room to work in, he was still, in whatever spare time he could find, carrying on his unescapable vocation of literature.”

—

     This quote of Gerald Brenan’s is used by Markson in his novel This Is Not A Novel:
     “Elderly, shabby, obscure, disreputable, pursued by debts, with only a noisy tenement room to work in.
     Being  a description by Gerald Brenan of the man who was writing Don Quixote.”

     Markson feel some affinity with this hardship?

     “Old. Tired. Sick. Alone. Broke.”
     Being Markson’s own self-description of the man who was writing The Last Novel.

     In an interview for Conjunctions, Tayt Harlin mentioned to Markson:
     “It seems that so much of your writing has to do with how artists get treated horribly. At one point, you quote Octavio Paz: ‘Writers are the beggars of Western society.’”  
     Markson responded:
     “Of course, there are important writers who become rich and famous. But there have always been—and I have an awful lot of quotations saying this—artists who are forgotten for decades or centuries. I quote Vasari about painters ‘who, not only without reward, but in miserable poverty, brought forth their works.’ It’s a fact of the creative life. On the other hand, I found another quotation, and I was pleased to see it, by Jules Renard, about how ‘Writing is the only profession where no one considers you ridiculous if you earn no money.’”

     Elderly. Shabby. Obscure. Disreputable. Pursued by Debts. With only a noisy tenement room to work in.
     Old. Tired. Sick. Alone. Broke.