Notes – Reading Markson Reading

The Dedication to The Waste Land in David Markson’s copy of Poems by T. S. Eliot:

On which Markson has made a number of notes…

     He placed a line in the margin and wrote that the quote:
     “NAM Sibyllam quidem Cumis ego ipse oculis meis vidi in ampulla pendere, et cum illi pueri dicerent: Σίβυλλα τί θέλεις; respondebat illa: ἀποθανεῖν θέλω.”
     Is from:
     “Petronius.”

     He underlined:
     “ἀποθανεῖν θέλω”
     And translated it as:
     “(I WISH TO DIE)”

     He underlined:
     “Il miglior fabbro”
     And translated it as:
     “(That greater magician)”

     He then created his own table of contents in the lower right corner, naming the five parts of The Waste Land:
     “I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD
     II. A GAME OF CHESS
     III. THE FIRE SERMON
     IV. DEATH BY WATER
     V. WHAT THE THUNDER SAID”

—-

Markson saw the four novels that make up the Notecard Quartet, his tetralogy, as somewhat similar, if still inferior, to Eliot’s The Waste Land.

     Markson claims This Is Not A Novel could be seen as:
     “An ersatz prose alternative to The Waste Land, if Writer so suggests.”
     – This Is Not A Novel, pg. 101.

Likewise, his friend and literary compatriot, Ann Beattie, wrote of Reader’s Block:
“Finally, a prose sequel to Eliot’s The Waste Land.”

Like Eliot’s The Waste Land, the novels in Markson’s Notecard Quartet warrant the kind of close reading, study and marginalia that Markson placed in his copy of Eliot’s master poem (as showcased in the above scan).

One wonders if Fannin, the detective in Markson’s Epitaph for a Tramp, did as close a reading of The Waste Land as Markson did…

“I sat around for a couple of hours, disciplining myself by not opening the next bottle until I could manage it without defacing the tax stamp, and trying to make sense of something called The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot which was the only book in the joint.”
– Epitaph for a Tramp, pg. 13 (of the collected Epitaph for a Tramp & Epitaph for a Dead Beat).

     “In such a misanthropic context, what better book to read than T. S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land, given Fannin’s bittersweet humor?”
     A question asked by Françoise Palleau-Papin in her Markson study This Is Not A Tragedy.
     A question seconded by yours truly.

—-

The table of contents of David Markson’s copy of A History of Latin Literature by Moses Hadas:

On which Markson wrote next to the chapter on “SATIRE”:
“—Juvenal, Martial”

—-

     Speaking of Latin satire, let us glance at something Françoise Palleau-Papin wrote about Markson’s one novel that is no longer in print: Miss Doll, Go Home:
     “Markson chose the killer for a literary mouthpiece because, ironically enough, the man who eventually murders all his accomplices is a free spirit like no other. His iconoclastic love for literature as well as people turns into hatred and destruction taken with the same pleasure, both love and hate being the proverbial two sides of the coin. The gangster’s favorite reading gives the key to the composition of the crime novel, which is akin to Latin satire, etymologically ‘a satire in the modern sense of the word, but also in the original Latin sense of a medley, a composite genre that mixes prose, verse, tragedy and comedy into a delightful motley of tones and genres.’ That satire takes delight in the grotesque mixing of tones, in incongruous borrowings and a well-crafted off-hand manner. In the Satyricon, Eumolpus, a serious-minded character, defines the work of a poet in such terms: ‘not can a mind, unless unricht with learning, be deliver’d of a birth of poetry.’ (p. 190). Miss Doll is so ‘enriched with learning’ that the delivery is a hilarious mixture of genres.”
     From Pg. 36 of This Is Not A Tragedy by Françoise Palleau-Papin.

All Markson’s novels in some sense a satire?

Lanx satura.

“An assemblage.” – Reader’s Block, pg. 140.

“Bricolage.” – Reader’s Block, pg. 141.

Lanx satura.

As in: “A full dish of various kinds of fruits.”

“A hilarious mixture of genres.”

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.

Pg. 189 of David Markson’s copy of The Spirit of Tragedy by Herbert J. Muller:

On which Markson wrote “F.D.” in the margins next to the sentence:
“The passion of the tragic hero is always likely to verge on madness.”

—-

I would assume that the “F.D.” stands for “Fyodor Dostoevsky,” a writer greatly admired by Markson, and whose writing is perfectly described by that line:
“The passion of the tragic hero is always likely to verge on madness.”

Dostoevsky, whose name can be spelled a number of ways—Markson always spelled it either “Dostoievsky” or “Dostoievski” (with an “i” in the middle, and an “i” or “y” on the end)—was one of Markson’s favorite writers, and one who had quite an influence on him.

Donald Hogin wrote in “Markson’s Progress”:
“Lowry was undeniably one of the significant influences upon Markson’s own creative life, the most obvious others being Joyce, Dostoyevski and Faulkner.”

As Françoise Palleau-Papin wrote in her This Is Not A Tragedy:
“Dostoyevsky’s influence on Markson is clear in Going Down, but the homage to the master is not an imitation.” (Pg. xxx).

     Or in his own words:
     “The Dostoievsky novel I cared about most is The Possessed, sometimes translated in English as The Devils. The first 200 pages can be a bore (a satire on Turgenev)—but after that I was always overwhelmed. And just incidentally, Crime and Punishment may have been the first book ever to suggest to me how stunning an experience literature could be.”
     As told to Françoise Palleau-Papin, and relayed in her This Is Not A Tragedy (pg. xxix).

     “The Shakespeare of the lunatic asylum.
     An early French critic called Dostoievsky.”
     – The Last Novel, pg. 29.

The passion of the tragic hero is always likely to verge on madness.

Last week I made a post about madness in Markson’s tetralogy.

In that post, I mentioned Markson’s Bookslut interview where he was asked whether or not “there is something about people at the edge of sanity” that appealed to him, 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.”

The passion of the tragic hero is always likely to verge on madness.

Pgs. 10 & 11 of David Markson’s copy of Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature by L. D. Reynolds & N. G. Wilson:

     On which Markson placed a check next to the information that Aristarchus “produced complete editions of both Iliad and Odyssey,” and then Markson also placed a line next to the entire paragraph where there is discussion of the marginalia signs used by Aristarchus in ancient copies of his Homeric texts.
     He then also numbered the six different signs used in the Aristarchus system:
     1) obelos – “indicated the verse was spurious”
     2) diple – “indicated any noteworthy point of language or content”
     3) dotted diple – “referred to a verse where Aristarchus differed in his text from Zenodotus”
     4) asterikos – “marked a verse incorrectly repeated in another passage”
     5) asterikos in conjunction with an obelos – “marked the interpolation of verses from another passage”
     6) antisigma – “marked passages in which the order of the lines had been disturbed”

—-

     Markson himself has six main signs he uses in the margins of the books he owned (many of which I now own) which I have gotten quite used to (yet I still don’t know exactly what they mean necessarily):
     1) checks – generally checks seem to be for anything of note (often things he then used in his tetralogy, but not always)
     2) lines – vertical lines in the margins (sometimes just one, sometimes two or more) appear to highlight major passages in a text (they usually don’t have anything to do with things that appear in his tetralogy, unless there are also checks next to them)
     3) dashes – dashes tend to be found in tables of contents next to, it seems, certain essays/chapters/stories/sections that Markson found important (or liked best)
     4) xs – xs are hard to figure out—at first I thought they might be things he disagreed with, but I no longer think that and now wonder if it is just an alternative to the check?
     5) underlines – when Markson underlines something it is usually a specific short passage in an otherwise marked up passage (with either lines, checks or xs).
     6) squiggles – a somewhat rare marking, and one that is even more enigmatic than the x.

There are also some other random things that are much less used by Markson—sometimes brackets appear, and then there are just random markings that show up here and there.

And, of course, the greatest marginal treats for Reader (of Markson Reading) are the notes, where he writes specific comments on the text (sometimes humorous, sometimes angry, sometimes unsure, sometimes disappointed, sometimes contrarian, etc.)…

Pg. 1 of David Markson’s copy of Ulysses on the Liffey by Richard Ellmann:

     On which Markson responded to the following assertion of Ellmann’s:
     “Homer had used twenty-four books, divided into three parts of four, eight, and twelve books.”
     By writing in the margins:
     “Hardly by Homer himself.”

—-

Very true, Mr. Markson, very true.

     “The twenty-four letters of the Greek alphabet. Ergo, the twenty-four books of the Iliad and of the Odyssey.
     Arranged by editors at Alexandria centuries after the fact.”
    Wrote Markson in Vanishing Point on pg. 65.

The “writings” of Homer are actually the writings of those that came later, attempting to capture in text form the oral epics as originally told—perhaps—by Homer.

Is it not easy to forget that though Homer is often ranked amongst the “greatest writers of all time,” everything we have that is “written” by him, was not written, but spoken?

     In fact, it is probable that Homer did not even know how to write:
     “Homer was blind too, of course.
     Although possibly this was only something that was said, insofar as Homer was concerned.
     I believe I have already mentioned that there were no pencils, then.
     Which is to say that when people said Homer was blind, it was because what they really did not wish to say was that Homer did not know how to write.”
     Says Kate in Markson’s masterpiece Wittgenstein’s Mistress. (Pgs. 125-126).

     Later on Kate adds:
     “Even if on third thought what one is only now forced to suspect is that there could have been still a different reason entirely, for the wrong number of ships in the Iliad.
     Which is to say that since Homer did not know how to write, very possibly he did not know how to add, either.” (Pg. 196).

     Not only did Homer not write, but there is no mention of writing in his masterpiece the Iliad:
     “There is no mention of writing in the Iliad. Any and all messages are passed along verbally.
     Indicating incidentally that not one of the Greek warriors, during then years at Troy, has ever sent a letter home.”
     A fact Markson passes along to us in his This Is Not A Novel. (Pg. 12).

So who is Homer?

There unfortunately is no reliable biographical information of the man handed down from classical antiquity.

No reliable biographical information of the man?

The man?

     “Meanwhile, Samuel Butler, the author of The Way of All Flesh, has suggested that the Odyssey was written by a woman, I am assuming the footnote said.
     Although doubtless there was rather more to it than that, it being a fairly safe guess that one does not change Homer from a man to a woman after three thousand years without including some sort of interesting explanation.
     I have no idea what that explanation may have been, however.
   Even though any number of people often insisted that there had never been any Homer to begin with, but were only various bards.”
     Reads a part of Wittgenstein’s Mistress on pgs. 103-104.

The Homeric question…

God above, is there anyone else alive who would ask a question like that at a moment like this?

Pg. 96 of David Markson’s copy of Three Classical Poets: Sappho, Catullus, and Juvenal by Richard Jenkyns:

     On which Markson has written:
     “Which is perfectly fine, George.”
     In the margins next to a complaint from George Orwell re: other writers in the 1920s:
     “What is noticeable about all these writers is that what ‘purpose’ they have is very much up in the air. There is no attention to the problems of the moment, above all no politics in the narrower sense. Our eyes are directed to Rome, to Byzantium, to Montparnasse, to Mexico, to the Etruscans… —to everywhere except the places where things are actually happening.”

—-

Reader (of Markson Reading) would have to agree here with Markson that it is “perfectly fine” for a writer to pay “no attention to the problems of the moment, above all no politics in the narrower sense.”
And I say that as a rather political person.

“Politics in a work of literature is like a pistol shot in the middle of a concert.”
A line used by Markson in Reader’s Block on pg. 25, which is an uncited quote by Stendhal.

I don’t agree with that sentiment though—I think politics are “perfectly fine” to have in your work of art or not.

“Categorically, with no politics.”
Markson wrote of This Is Not A Novel in This Is Not A Novel. (Pg. 7).

     But though Markson often expressed his wish to keep politics out of his art, one notices, especially by The Last Novel, they ended up creeping right on in.
     How else can one explain:
     —“No different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation.
     Said someone on the radio named Rush Limbaugh about American soldiers abusing prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq.
     People having a good time.” (Pg. 70).
     —“Dear President George W. Bush:
     Herewith please find uncorrected proofs for the newly discovered rewritten version of Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit. Kindly limit your review to twelve thousand words. Thank you.” (Pg. 140).
     —“Abortionists, feminists, gays, lesbians—all in good part responsible for 9/11, said Jerry Falwell.
     I totally concur. Said Pat Robertson.” (Pg. 142).
     —“Capital punishment is our society’s recognition of the sanctity of human life.
     Declared a Utah senator named Orrin Hatch—presumably a former honors student in Logic 101.” (Pg. 152).
     Etc.

     In the Conjunctions interview with Tayt Harlin, this was brought up to Markson, the mention of current political figures and situations:
     “There are some contemporary references in this book. You mention the Iraq war a couple of times, George W. Bush, and even Rush Limbaugh.”
     Markson’s response:
     “I hesitated about that; I usually don’t do it. My attitude is that everybody should know even the most obscure painter or composer. But fucking George W. Bush? A hundred years from now? Who will know him any more than they know Chester Alan Arthur? Well, no, it’s different, because he may end the world. But I think I released some braces with this book when I let myself mention those few people.”

Françoise Palleau-Papin’s take on this new foray into the realm of contemporary politics, that is pretty much completely missing from his previous books, can be found on pg. 258 of her book This Is Not A Tragedy:
“The narrator chooses to set his narrative more in contemporary history, mentioning George W. Bush and the Abu Ghraib jail (p. 70), global warming (p. 123), and mad cow disease, given in its medical name forming a sentence in the entirety of a paragraph: ‘Bovine spongiform encephalopathy’ (p. 70). This is how he settles accounts with the crimes of our times.” (Pg. 258).

The truth is politics were always underlying Markson’s work—perhaps not specific contemporary politics, but these are books that say and do something.

And anything said or done is a political act, whether you want it to be or not.

Not saying or doing anything, also a political act.

Art must be political, by accident if not by design..

“And so. And so. End his book with right now, at least solder in its subtle, unsuspected political motif?”
Says Spinger’s Progress, on pg. 209.

Pg. 173 of David Markson’s copy of Prophets Without Honour: Freud, Kafka, Einstein, and Their World by Frederic V. Grunfeld:

On which Markson wrote under a picture of Alfred Doeblin:
“Is there no better photo than this?”

—-

Well, there’s this one:

Is that better, Dave?

Pg. 220 of David Markson’s copy of Prophets Without Honour: Freud, Kafka, Einstein, and Their World by Frederic V. Grunfeld:

On which Markson translated the title of Chapter VII (“ULTIMA MULTIS”) as:
“(The last day for many)”

—-

     On pg. 25 of This Is Not A Novel, Markson uses this chapter title (with an explanation as to its original source):
     “On an ancient sundial in Ibiza: Ultima multis.
     The last day for many.”

Though the phrase is supposedly from that ancient sundial in Ibiza, how it finds its way to us in modern times (and presumably to Markson) is through a mention in a passage in Walter Benjamin’s The Storyteller:
“And in the course of the nineteenth century, bourgeois society—by means of medical and social, private and public institutions—realized a secondary effect, which may have been its subconscious main purpose: to enable people to avoid the site of the dying. Dying was once a public process in the life of the individual, and a most exemplary one; think of the medieval pictures in which the deathbed has turned into a throne that people come toward through the wide-open doors of the dying person’s house. In the course of modern times, dying has been pushed further and further out of the perceptual world of the living. It used to be that there was not a single house, hardly a single room, in which someone had not once died. (The Middle Ages also experienced spatially what makes the inscription Ultima multis—which adorns a sundial on Ibiza—significant as an expression of the time.)”

“Was Walter Benjamin the first to point out that where every home once possessed room after room in which people had died, in today’s world virtually everyone dies somewhere else?”
Asked Markson in Vanishing Point on pg. 83.

Ultima Multis.

The last page of David Markson’s copy of The Complete Greek Drama: Volume Two by Various (Ed. Whitney J. Oates & Eugene O’Neill, Jr.):

     On which Markson wrote at the bottom of the page:
     “LO, I HAVE SEEN THE OPEN HAND OF GOD
     AND IN IT NOTHING, NOTHING, SAVE THE ROD
     OF MINE AFFLICTION……
                                   —THE TROJAN WOMEN”

—

     “Lo, I have seen the open hand of God;
     And in it nothing, nothing, save the rod
     Of mine affliction…”
     Words spoken by Hecuba in The Trojan Women by Euripides.

     Hecuba, to whom Markson makes mention on pgs. 93-94 of his masterpiece Wittgenstein’s Mistress:
     “But what I am actually now thinking about, for some reason, is the scene in The Trojan Women where the Greek soldiers throw Hector’s poor baby boy over the city’s walls, so that he will not grow up to take revenge for his father or for Troy.
     God, the thing men used to do.
     Irene Papas was an effective Helen in the film of The Trojan Women, however.
     Katharine Hepburn was an effective Hecuba, as well.
     Hecuba was Hector’s mother. Well, which is to say she was the baby boy’s grandmother also, of course.
     Just imagine how Katharine Hepburn must have felt.”

Nothing, nothing, save the rod of mine affliction……

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