Pg. 578 of David Markson’s copy of Faulkner: A Biography by Joseph Leo Blotner:
On which Markson places a line next to and then responds to Blotner’s assertion that Faulkner did not go to the funeral of Dylan Thomas.
Markson explaining in the margin:
“Absolutely not so—I saw him there!”
—
Absolutely not so—I saw him there!
Markson corrects Blotner not just in the margins of the biography itself, but in his novel Reader’s Block:
“The Blotner biography says that although he was in New York, Faulkner did not attend the memorial service held after Dylan Thomas’s death. In fact he wore a gray tweed jacket, an emerald vestm abd a Tyrolean hat. With a feather.” (Pg. 85)
One must also assume this must be the funeral Markson is speaking of on pg. 161 of This Is Not A Novel?
“Writer had but a glimpse of Faulkner.”
And a few lines later:
“Faulkner, at a funeral. Small and beady-eyed.”
Of course, Markson is not the only one to correct Blotner on this point.
In a later Faulkner biography, One Matchless Time: A Life of WIlliam Faulkner, Jay Parini writes of Faulkner:
“One night, he ran into Dylan Thomas, and they greeted each other warmly; a few nights later, on November 9, 1953, Thomas was dead, the victim of an acute alcoholic ‘insult to the brain,’ as the doctors put it. Faulkner attended the funeral with Joan.” (Pg. 357.)
Yes, we know: Markson…
…saw him there!