Lit – Page 2 – Reading Markson Reading

Pg. 43 of David Markson’s copy of Conversations with Toscanini by B. H. Haggin:

     On which Markson has placed a line next to the following passage:
     “It is my impression that intelligent orchestra players didn’t regard Toscanini’s rages as mere self-indulgence by a man who could be reasonable and patient but felt privileged to…”
     The passage continues onto the next page which is not in the above scan:
     “…be unreasonable and impatient. I think they understood that he was, in his relation to music, a man obsessed and possessed, and that such a man was not rational and reasonable—not in music nor in anything else.”

—-

Toscanini was known for his “rages.”

And Markson made sure to mention these a few times in his tetralogy.

“Orchestra play like pig.
Being an Arturo Toscanini explanation of why he would not apologize to his Metropolitan Opera musicians after cursing at them in Italian.” (Vanishing Point, pg. 2).

“Orchestra play like pig.”
Markson repeated the line on pg. 191 of that same novel.

“When I die, I open a bordello. You know what is a bordello, no? But against every one of you—all—I lock shut the door.
Said Arturo Toscanini, to a recalcitrant orchestra.” (The Last Novel, pg. 1).

But as the above scan claims:
“It is my impression that intelligent orchestra players didn’t regard Toscanini’s rages as mere self-indulgence by a man who could be reasonable and patient but felt privileged to be unreasonable and impatient. I think they understood that he was, in his relation to music, a man obsessed and possessed, and that such a man was not rational and reasonable—not in music nor in anything else.”

A man obsessed and possessed…

Pg. 41 of David Markson’s copy of Mao II by Don DeLillo:

On which Markson wrote a note in the margins next to a passage in DeLillo’s novel.

The DeLillo passage reads:
“Years ago I used to think it was possible for a novelist to alter the inner life of the culture. Now bomb-makers and gunmen have taken that territory. They make raids on human consciousness. What writers used to do before we were all incorporated.”

Markson’s response?:
“Too facile.”

He placed a line next to the passage as well, and wrote something more, under “Too facile,” but then crossed out whatever he had written.

—-

This exchange reminds me of Markson making a similar connection between writers (as terrorists) and terrorists (as terrorists)…

In his novel Vanishing Point, Markson quoted a passage from Jack Kerouac’s On the Road:
“When daybreak came we were zooming through New Jersey with the great cloud of Metropolitan New York rising before us in the snowy distance. Dean had a sweater wrapped around his ears to keep warm. He said we were a band of Arabs coming to blow up New York.” (Pg. 169).

Immediately after that passage, Markson wrote this:
“Terrorists. Which was in fact the literary term chosen to categorize the earliest nineteenth-century female Gothic novelists.” (Pg. 169).

And throughout the entirety of Vanishing Point, the specter of 9/11 rears its head.

(After all, it was published in 2004, only a few short years after the towers fell.
And was being written when the towers fell.)

On pg. 8, Markson wrote:
“The greatest work of art ever, Karlheinz Stockhausen called the destruction of the World Trade Center.”

    On pg. 40, Markson used the quote:
    “Teacher, look! The birds are on fire!”
    Which had been said by a young, naive schoolgirl unknowingly commenting on the bodies falling from the burning buildings.

     On pg. 79, Markson let the Author assert his presence with:
     “Practically all those interviewed in the aftermath of the World Trade Center disaster agreed that they had never confronted anything more horrendous.
     Author’s curiosity as to whether anyone thought to inquire of the writer of Slaughterhouse-Five.”

     And on pg. 111, Markson connected:
     “Jack the Ripper was left-handed.
     Like Osama bin Laden.”

As Françoise Palleau-Papin explained in her study of Markson, This Is Not A Tragdy, re: Vanishing Point:
“The novel also deals with current affairs, but in a roundabout fashion, as when we are reminded of the nineteenth-century definition of the word ‘terrorist’: ‘Terrorists. Which was in fact the literary term chosen to categorize the earliest nineteenth-century female Gothic novelists’ (p. 169). To move implicitly to the political definition of terrorism from the word’s former literary sense draws our attention to the power of writing. Literary terror does not kill but thrills, and, presented in its uncanny, Gothic aspect, it questions our culture. But, implicitly, Author is also concerned with the contemporary definition of terrorists and feels terror when faced with the barbarity of his times, and wishes to impart his fears and views.” (Pg. 256).

No matter what our opinion as Readers (of Markson Reading) is of his assessment that DeLillo’s passage in Mao II on writers/terrorists is “too facile,” we can certainly agree that Markson’s wrestling with the same issue in Vanishing Point is anything but “facile.” The way the concept of terror in the post-9/11 world creeps up on you subtly by a few scattered mentions throughout Vanishing Point, and then comes to a crescendo on pg. 169 with him bringing it back to writers as terrorists is done without hammering it over the reader’s head whatsoever.

A postcard sent to Charles J. Shields from David Markson re: the biography of Kurt Vonnegut that Shields has written (which will be published later this year).

     On which Markson wrote:
     “Dear Charles—                                                      3/29/09
     Just a few words to express regrets, again, that I couldn’t make myself available while you were here. Damn, and just a day later a gorgeous young female friend called to see if she might stop by on the weekend, and I had to tell her please, no, likewise. (Trust me, that one hurt more than putting off Charles Shields—since I mean truly gorgeous!) Hey, but let’s hope next time.
                                                              Best—Dave M.

—-

This is my second posting of a notecard sent to Shields by Markson.

A slight break from marginalia.

But no break from interesting Markson posts.

This is my personal favorite of the notecards Shields sent over to me from Markson because you really get a sense of the hilarious old letch that he was—and didn’t really deny being—with all the talk of his “gorgeous young female friend.”

     And why deny being?
     “Again, what but liking women the ineludible essence here, there a known remedy?”
     From pg. 6 of Springer’s Progress.

Lucien Springer, the protagonist of said novel, who seems to closely resemble the writer.

“Stylistic and erotic playfulness bring the reader closer to a highly colorful character, who sounds very close in spirit to the writer in his younger years, even though Markson avoids the topic of his biography in his interviews about the novel.”
Explained Françoise Palleau-Papin on pg. 131 of her study This Is Not A Tragedy.

“You’re an inveterate horny old man.”
Jessica Cornford calls Springer on pg. 48 of that book.

“I am that.”
He responds.

—-

The bottom edge of David Markson’s copy of The Perennial Scope of Philosophy by Karl Jaspers:

On which Markson wrote his initials across the pages:
“DMM”

—-

David Merrill Markson was found dead on June 4th, 2010.

A month later, in the first week of July, his private library started to appear in the stacks of the Strand.

Soon after that Annecy Liddell found Markson’s copy of Don DeLillo’s White Noise.
Which was marked up with a number of negative comments towards DeLillo and his writing.

And then the Markson Treasure Hunt began after Alex Abramovich wrote his London Review of Books article (published August 26th, 2010).

I began my collection the day after that article was published.

     That first day I came home with great finds like:
     – David Markson’s Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
     – David Markson’s Robert Graves’ Collected Poems 1955
     – David Markson’s Conrad Aiken’s Ushant: An Essay
     – David Markson’s Conrad Aiken’s The Short Stories of…
     – David Markson’s Conrad Aiken’s The Collected Novels of…
     – David Markson’s Maxim Gorky’s Reminiscences
     – David Markson’s Bruce Arnold’s The Scandal of Ulysses
     – David Markson’s Richard Ellmann’s Ulysses on the Liffey
     – David Markson’s Richard Ellmann’s The Consciousness of Joyce
     – David Markson’s Joseph Blotner’s Faulkner: A Biography
     – David Markson’s William York Tindall’s Forces in Modern British Literature
     And a handful more…

A day after that, in other sections of the same bookstore, certain other Markson books were removed from the shelves (by yours truly and others), and this time a book entitled The Perennial Scope of Philosophy by Karl Jaspers was discovered on the scene, inscribed with the initials DMM.

     “A week after that, in another small town in the same area, certain ranch deeds and water titles were removed from a land office, and this time a kerchief was discovered on the scene, embroidered with the initials DBM.”
     From pg. 65 of Markson’s The Ballad of Dingus Magee.
     In which the characters initials D.M. are Markson’s initials.
     Though the middle initial is different.

     D.M.M.
     David Merrill Markson
     D.B.M.
     Dingus Billy Magee

Pg. 37 of David Markson’s copy of The World of Odysseus by M. I. Finley:

On which Markson placed a check next to and an underline underneath the information that Hissarlik (aka Troy) lies “some three miles from the Dardanelles.”

—-

     Markson on pg. 8 of Wittgenstein’s Mistress wrote:
     “From Hisarlik, the water is perhaps an hour’s walk away.”
     Which, of course, is basically saying that it is three miles away.
     Seeing as the average person’s walking pace is about 3 miles per hour.
     Thus making a three mile walk an hour walk.

Pg. 61 of David Markson’s copy of Wittgenstein’s Vienna by Allan Janik & Stephen Toulmin:

On which Markson placed a check next to a Theodor Herzl quote regarding the creation of a Jewish state:
“If you wish it, it is no fairy tale,” and “If you don’t wish it, it is a fairy tale.”

—-

     The first of those two statements of Herzl’s re: the creation of a Jewish state:
     “If you wish it, it is no fairy tale.”
     Used in Markson’s This Is Not A Novel, albeit with a variation in the translation:
     “If you will it, it is no dream.
     Said Theodor Herzl.”
     Markson wrote on pg. 31.

If you wish it, it is no fairy tale.

If you will it, it is no dream.

If you build it, he will come.

Oh, sorry, that last one isn’t a translation of Herzl, but a quote from the movie Field of Dreams.

Who is the he that came in that movie?

“An old-time baseball player, wasn’t there?”
– Markson’s Going Down, pg. 13. (Obviously out of context).

John Kinsella. Fictitious baseball player.

Others came too: Shoeless Joe Jackson. Moonlight Graham. Both real.

Baseball is one of Markson’s main obsessions.
References to the sport can be found in just about every one of his novels.

     Baseball was likewise a major topic in the old literary haunts Markson frequented (like The Lion’s Head & The White Horse Tavern):
     “Joint’s awash in authors, prime theme indisputably’d be gelt. Pussy and/or baseball running a tight second, however.”
     – Springer’s Progress, pg. 3.

     Baseball held a special place in his heart:
     “Markson acknowledges his autobiographical bias and wonders about his own nostalgia for a bygone era of baseball before his time, asking the reader the question that troubles him and to which he gives no direct answer: ‘How does one explain baseball nostalgia?’”
     Says Françoise Papin-Pelleau in her Markson study This Is Not A Tragedy re: Markson’s “A Day for Addie Joss.”

     Perhaps some answer can be found in the movie I mentioned that caused this digression: Field of Dreams.
     In that movie James Earl Jones’ character says:
     “The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it’s a part of our past, Ray. It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again.”

How does one explain baseball nostalgia?

Field of Dreams.

If you will it, it is no dream.

Pg. 17 of David Markson’s copy of Shakespeare: The Poet in His World by M. C. Bradbrook:

On which Markson placed a check next to the sentence:
“Shakespeare’s three younger brothers all died before him, and none was married—which prompts speculation.”

—-

     On pg. 11 of Markson’s The Last Novel:
     “Always give a moment’s pause when happening to remember—that Shakespeare had three brothers.
     One of whom was a haberdasher.”

     And later on down on the same page from the same novel:
     “Shakespeare’s sister Joan—the only sibling to survive him, and a relatively indigent widow.
     Whose welfare he took care to safeguard in his will.”

I can’t help, when discussing the siblings of Shakespeare, but immediately think of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own, where she makes extensive mention of Shakespeare’s sister.

     In it Woolf wrote of an imaginary sister of Shakespeare’s named Judith (who would have possessed his genius but not his opportunities):
     “Meanwhile his extraordinarily gifted sister, let us suppose, remained at home. She was as adventurous, as imaginative, as agog to see the world as he was. But she was not sent to school. She had no chance of learning grammar and logic, let alone of reading Horace and Virgil. She picked up a book now and then, one of her brother’s perhaps, and read a few pages. But then her parents came in and told her to mend the stockings or mind the stew and not moon about with books and papers. They would have spoken sharply but kindly, for they were substantial people who knew the conditions of life for a woman and loved their daughter—indeed, more likely than not she was the apple of her father’s eye. Perhaps she scribbled some pages up in an apple loft on the sly, but was careful to hide them or set fire to them. Soon, however, before she was out of her teens, she was to be betrothed to the son of a neighboring wool-stapler. She cried out that marriage was hateful to her, and for that she was severely beaten by her father. Then he ceased to scold her. He begged her instead not to hurt him, not to shame him in this matter of her marriage. He would give her a chain of beads or a fine petticoat, he said; and there were tears in his eyes. How could she disobey him? How could she break his heart? The force of her own gift alone drove her to it. She made up a small parcel of her belongings, let herself down by a rope one summer’s night and took the road to London. She was not seventeen. The birds that sang in the hedge were not more musical than she was. She had the quickest fancy, a gift like her brother’s, for the tune of words. Like him, she had a taste for the theatre. She stood at the stage door; she wanted to act, she said. Men laughed in her face. The manager—a fat, loose-lipped man—guffawed. He bellowed something about poodles dancing and women acting—no woman, he said, could possibly be an actress. He hinted—you can imagine what. She could get no training in her craft. Could she even seek her dinner in a tavern or roam the streets at midnight? Yet her genius was for fiction and lusted to feed abundantly upon the lives of men and women and the study of their ways. At last—for she was very young, oddly like Shakespeare the poet in her face, with the same grey eyes and rounded brows—at last Nick Greene the actor-manager took pity on her; she found herself with child by that gentleman and so—who shall measure the heat and violence of the poet’s heart when caught and tangled in a woman’s body?—killed herself one winter’s night and lies buried at some crossroads where the omnibuses now stop outside the Elephant and Castle.
     That, more or less, is how the story would run, I think, if a woman in Shakespeare’s day had had Shakespeare’s genius.”

Could Joan have been like Woolf’s imaginary Judith?

Could Joan have been as much a genius as her brother William?

Joan, the only sibling to survive him…

Pg. 284 of David Markson’s copy of Crack-Up by F. Scott Fitzgerald:

On which Markson placed a bracket and a line next to (and underlined the first sentence and last part of the last sentence of) the following paragraph from a letter from Fitzgerald to Hemingway discussing Hem’s For Whom the Bell Tolls:
“Congratulations too on your new book’s great success. I envy you like hell and there is no irony in this. I always liked Dostoiefski with his wide appeal more than any other European—and I envy you the time it will give you to do what you want.”

—-

Congratulations too on your new book’s great success.

I envy you like hell and there is no irony in this.

I envy you the time it will give you to do what you want

     Fitzgerald said other complimentary things of For Whom the Bell Tolls in the letter in the above scan too:
     – “It’s a fine novel, better than anybody else writing could do.”
     – “The massacre was magnificent and also the fight on the mountain and the actual dynamiting scene.”
     – “The scene in which the father says goodbye to his son is very powerful.”
     – “I’m going to read the whole thing again.”

     What’s interesting about these kind remarks is that when I went to Markson’s books to see if the marked quote was used by Markson—or if any of the other quotes were used—I found something quite fascinating:
     Fitzgerald’s sentiments on For Whom the Bell Tolls ARE mentioned in the tetralogy, but not the sentiments from the above letter. Instead apparently Fitzgerald thought differently of For Whom the Bell Tolls when not writing directly to Hemingway:
     “A thoroughly superficial book with all the profundity of Rebecca.
     Scott Fitzgerald called For Whom the Bell Tolls.”
     Markson tells us on pg. 135 of Vanishing Point.

Fitzgerald singing an altogether different tune…

Pg. 36 of David Markson’s copy of Classic Art: An Introduction to the Italian Renaissance by Heinrich Wolfflin:

On which Markson put a check next to the following passage:
“As we saw, Leonardo retained only one great line, the indispensable one of the table, yet even here there is something new. I do not mean the omission of the projecting ends—he is not the first to do that; the innovation lies in having the courage to depict a physical impossibility in order to obtain a heightened effect. The table is far too small. If the covers are counted it is clear that all the people there could not have sat down. Leonardo wishes to avoid the effect of the Disciples lost behind a long table, and the impression made by the figures is so strong that no one notices the lack of space.”

—-

The other day I created a post, using a scan from this same book by Wolfflin, re: the oddly large size of the hands and feet on Michelangelo’s David. In that post, I mentioned that Markson made note of this fact of the large extremities of Michelangelo’s David in a couple of his pre-tetralogy novels, and in both instances associated the largeness of David’s extremities with the smallness of the table in Leonardo Da Vinci’s The Last Supper.

Perhaps this was because the information came from the same book?

Heinrich Wolfflin’s Classic Art: An Introduction to the Italian Renaissance.

Or perhaps—even more important than the source—he liked linking the largeness of the one with the smallness of the other?

“Table in The Last Supper’s too small. Hands and feet on Michelangelo’s David are too big.” (Springer’s Progress, Pg. 76).

“In fact it was similarly Leonardo’s own doing when he made the table in The Last Supper far too small for all of those Jewish people who are supposed to be eating at it.
Or Michelangelo’s, when he took away superfluous material on his David but left the hands and feet too big.” (Wittgenstein’s Mistress, Pg. 148).

Whether the extremities are too big, or whether the table is too small, the point is that art doesn’t have to accurately reflect reality.
(And actually couldn’t, even if it wanted to.)

“People speak of naturalism in opposition to modern painting. Where and when has anyone ever seen a natural work of art?
Asked Picasso.” (The Last Novel, Pg. 9)

“No artist tolerates reality, Camus said.” (This Is Not A Novel, Pg. 105).

“The act of painting transforms the painter’s mind into something similar to the mind of God.
Said Leonardo.” (This Is Not A Novel, Pg. 178).

The artist thus imagines and creates an alternative reality.

“This very sort of imagining being the artist’s privilege, obviously.
Well, it is what artists do.” (Wittgenstein’s Mistress, Pg. 148).

Art doesn’t have to accurately reflect reality.

“Art is not truth. Art is a lie that enables us to recognize truth.
Said Picasso.” (Vanishing Point, Pg. 108).

Pg. 287 of David Markson’s copy of The Spirit of Tragedy by Herbert J. Muller:

On which Markson placed a check next to a quote from a Chekhov play:
“I am old, I am tired, I am trivial; my sensibilities are dead.”

—-

“I am old, I am tired, I am trivial; my sensibilities are dead.”
Words said by Astroff in Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya.

Old. Tired. Trivial.

     Reminds me of:
     “Old. Tired. Sick. Alone. Broke.”
     – The Last Novel, pg. 2.

     “Old. Tired. Sick. Alone. Broke.
     All of which obviously means that this is the last book Novelist is going to write.”
     – The Last Novel, pg. 3.

“Old. Tired. Sick. Alone. Broke.”
– The Last Novel, pg. 190.

     “Old. Tired. Sick. Alone. Broke.”
     The title of Catherine Texier’s review of The Last Novel for the New York Times.
     Where she writes:
     “But what it resembles most is a long poem.
     In rhythm and tonality, if not in content, ‘The Last Novel’ hints at the incantations of the Kaddish—it sometimes evokes the beat of Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Kaddish’ and ‘Howl’—and brings to mind the Renaissance complaints of the French poets Pierre de Ronsard and Joachim du Bellay, François Villon’s famous ‘Ballad of the Ladies of Yore,’ mourning the loss of youth, and Shakespeare sonnets lamenting the specter of death.”

Mourning the loss of youth…lamenting the specter of death…

Catherine Texier was, of course, right to focus on the problems of old age in her review.
That is definitely one of the most prevalent of Markson’s obsessions in the tetralogy, and especially in The Last Novel (which “can be readily read by itself,” Markson wants me to emphasize, as seen on pg. 161 of that novel, and as discussed in yesterday’s post).

Between the “Old. Tired. Sick. Alone. Broke.” on pg. 2 and the one on pg. 190, there exists a number of times where Markson specifically broods over the aging process…

“Rereading a Raymond Chandler novel in which Philip Marlowe stops in for a ten-cent cup of coffee.
Old enough to remember when the coffee would have cost half that” (Pg. 18).

“Old enough to remember when they were still called penny postcards.
And a letter cost three cents.” (Pg. 23).

“Mithridates, he died old.” (Pg. 48).

“Old enough to have started coming upon likenesses on postage stamps of other writers he had known personally or had at least met in passing.” (Pg. 79).

“Michelangelo’s Pieta—
Is the Virgin many years too young?” (Pg. 83).

“How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you was?
Asked Satchel Paige.” (Pg. 92).

“Anton Bruckner, in old age, tells Gustav Mahler that he can readily foresee his coming interrogation by his Maker—
Why else have I given you talent, you son of a bitch, than that you should sing My praise and glory? But you have accomplished much too little.” (Pg. 95).

“I hope I never get so old I get religious.
Quoth Ingmar Bergman.” (Pg. 104).

“It’s a terrible thing to die young. Still, it saves a lot of time.
Quoth Grace Paley.” (Pg. 120).

“When I am eighty, my art may finally begin to cohere. By ninety, it may truly turn masterful.
Said Hokusai. At seventy-three.” (Pg. 151).

“A passage in Montaigne where he speaks of himself being well on the road to old age—having long since passed forty.” (Pg. 157).

“Old Hoss. Old Pete. Old Reliable. Old Folks. Old Aches and Pains.” (Pg. 175).

“Old age is not for sissies.
Said Bette Davis.” (Pg. 178).

“Freud, born in 1856, being asked in 1936 how he felt:
How a man of eighty feels is not a topic for conversation.” (Pg. 178).

“Shaw, at ninety-four, being asked the same:
At my age, one is either well or dead.” (Pg. 179).

“My old paintings no longer interest me. I’m much more curious about those I haven’t done yet.
Said Picasso, at seventy-nine.” (Pg. 184).

“You can tell from my handwriting that I am in the twenty-fourth hour. Not a single thought is born in me that does not have death graven within.
Wrote Michelangelo at eighty-one—himself with eight years remaining.” (Pg. 184).

“I’ve no more sight, no hand, nor pen, not inkwell. I lack everything. All I still possess is will.
Said Goya—nearing eighty.” (Pg. 186).

     “Time rushes by, love rushes by, life rushes by, but the red shoes dance on.
     What happens in the end?
     Oh, in the end she dies.” (Pg. 186).

“Cézanne, who lived in greater and greater isolation, late in life.” (Pg. 186).

“Degas, who lived in greater and greater isolation, late in life.” (Pg. 187).

“Sophocles, re a tremor in his hand, as recorded by Aristotle:
He said he could not help it; he would happily rather not be ninety years old.” (Pg. 187).

“The old man who will not laugh is a fool.
Said Santayana.” (Pg. 189).

“Dispraised, infirm, unfriended age.
Sophocles calls it.” (Pg. 189).

“Unregarded age in corners thrown.
Shakespeare echoes.” (Pg. 189).

     The novel ends with:
     “Old. Tired. Sick. Alone. Broke.
     The old man who will not laugh is a fool.
     Als ick kan.” (Pg. 190).

I am old, I am tired, I am trivial; my sensibilities are dead.

Old. Tired. Sick. Alone. Broke.