Lit – Page 17 – Reading Markson Reading

The first page of David Markson’s copy of Art on the Edge: Creators and Situations by Harold Rosenberg:

On which he placed his last name and “NYC” as a simple inscription.

—

     Harold Rosenberg, the author of the book from which this scan is taken, is mentioned in Markson’s Wittgenstein’s Mistress amongst a bunch of other art critics:
     “And of course it was around this same time that one discovered that people who wrote ordinary art reviews in the daily newspapers had stopped calling themselves art reviewers and become art critics, as well.
     Which naturally led one to wonder just what one was supposed to call E. H. Gombrich or Meyer Schapiro, then.
     Well, or Erwin Panofsky or Millard Meiss or Heinrich Wölfflin or Rudolph Arnheim or Harold Rosenberg or Arnold Hauser or André Malraux or René Huyghe or William Gaunt or Walter Friedlaender or Max J. Friedländer or Élie Faure or Émile Mâle or Kenneth Clark or Wylie Sypher or Clement Greenberg or Herbert Read.
     Or for that matter Wilhelm Worringer or Roger Fry or Bernard Berenson or Clive Bell or Walter Pater of Jacob Bruckhardt or Eugène Fromentin or Baudelaire or the Goncourts or Wincklemann or Schlegel or Lessing or Cennini or Aretino or Alberti or Vasari or John Ruskin, even.
     Although doubtless I am showing off again.
     Just for the minute I felt like I needed it this time, however.” (Pg. 211).

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!

Pg. 40 of David Markson’s copy of The Failure of Criticism by Henri Peyre:

On which Markson drew a line in the margin next to the following sentence:
“‘Childish,’ ‘infantile,’ ‘silly,’ ‘affected,’ ‘drivelling,’ difficult of comprehension,’ ‘unintelligible,’ ‘bombastic,’ ‘obscure,’ ‘absurd,’ ‘nauseating’: such are the choice epithets with which contemporary critics characterized Wordsworth’s poetry.”

—

     On pg. 6 of David Markson’s The Last Novel, part of this list is utilized in a longer section of how different writers were perceived by contemporary critics:
     “Infantile. Absurd. Driveling. Nauseating.
     Reserved for Wordsworth.”

Talking about his “personal genre,” as he termed it, in an interview at KCRW with Michael Silverblatt, Markson explains:
“What I do is essentially leave out most of the baggage of the usual novel: plot, character, dramatic incidents, dramatic scenes—which sounds as if there’s nothing much left (and some people probably think there is nothing much left). But these books are loaded with incidental odds-and-ends, intellectual snippets—whatever you might call them—about literary people, about artists, about composers, even sometimes sports figures. Quotations—sometimes attributed, sometimes not. However, they are tied together with certain themes. What they’re basically conveying is the nature of the artistic life. Most frequently its despairs and defeats, or sometimes even rotten reviews, and sometimes even from their peers (who should be kinder).”

Despairs and defeats.
Rotten Reviews.

Infantile. Absurd. Driveling. Nauseating.
Reserved for Wordsworth.

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

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.