Pg. 236 of David Markson’s copy of Mao II by Don DeLillo:
On which Markson marked two lines in the margin next to DeLillo’s words:
“He is saying very simple. There is a longing for Mao that will sweep the world.”
Next to this, Markson explained one of his main gripes about the book:
“But as a matter of fact the book needed much more about him, in some context or other. (As, indeed, it needed much more re Bill’s books.)”
—
He is saying very simple. There is a longing for more about Mao that swept across Markson as he read.
The page before the title page and the title page of David Markson’s copy of Tolstoy: His Life and Work by Derrick Leon:
On which Markson, underneath a portrait of Tolstoy, wrote the number 23 with a circle around it (the age of Tolstoy at the time of the portrait).
—
“Tolstoy kept a portrait of Dickens on the wall in his study.”
– David Markson, Vanishing Point, pg. 28.
Wonder what age Dickens was in the portrait Tolstoy hung in his study?
“Tolstoy, as a student, wore a medallion portrait of [Rousseau] instead of his Orthodox cross.”
– David Markson, This Is Not A Novel, pg. 32.
Wonder what age Rousseau was in the portrait Tolstoy wore round his neck?
—
David Markson’s copy of Tolstoy: His Life and Work by Derrick Leon is owned by John Harrison. The above scan is used with his permission. Copyright © John Harrison.
Pg. 195 of David Markson’s copy of Ezra Pound: Among the Poets by Various (Ed. George Bornstein):
On which Markson put quotation marks around the title of a chapter:
“The Contemporary of Our Grandchildren”
And then written in the margin:
“(Phrase is Kenner’s)”
—
The concept of Pound being “the contemporary of our grandchildren” is a fascinating idea which definitely is complicated by this quote of Pound’s as retold by Markson in his Conjunctions interview:
“Ezra Pound once said something like there’s no record of a critic saying anything important about writers who have come after him.”
Pg. 40 of David Markson’s copy of Melville by Edwin Haviland Miller:
On which Markson wrote “Huh?” in the margins, as he was confused by the assertion of Miller’s re: Melville that he was “the only American descendant of Rabelais.”
—
This is quite obviously NOT true, the concept of Melville being “the only American descendant of Rabelais.”
In fact, of a novel from one American author it had once been written:
“Rabelaisian, yet uncannily wise, both ribald and bittersweet.”
Of which novel had this been said?
Springer’s Progress.
And what American author wrote that book?
David Markson, of course.
(One of a number of American descendants of Rabelais.)
And we even know, most likely, which translation of Rabelais Markson read thanks to the semi-autobiographical-ness of his late tetralogy:
“Writer’s pleasure in realizing that the translation of Rabelais he most recently read was done by the father of Tanaquil LeClercq.”
– David Markson, This Is Not A Novel, pg. 117
Pg. 73 of David Markson’s copy of The Essential Shakespeare: A Biographical Adventure by J. Dover Wilson:
On which Markson has written “Wm. W” next to the quote:
“Mighty poets in their misery dead.”
—
“Wm. W.” = William Wordsworth
Who, in the poem Resolution and Independence, wrote:
“My former thoughts returned: the fear that kills;
And hope that is unwilling to be fed;
Cold, pain, and labour, and all fleshly ills;
And mighty Poets in their misery dead.
—Perplexed, and longing to be comforted,
My question eagerly did I renew,
‘How is it that you live, and what is it you do?’”
(Italics mine.)
On pg. 159 of his novel This Is Not A Novel, Markson wrote:
“And mighty poets in their misery dead.”
(Italics Markson’s.)
Pg. 281 of David Markson’s copy of James Joyce: Two Decades of Criticism by Various (Ed. Seon Givens):
On which Markson responded to Philip Toynbee’s comment:
“I shall say nothing of the seventy-page question-and-answer section which follows, because it had become, and not unjustly, the point de mire of all hostile critics.”
Markson responded with:
“Damn it the ‘experiment’ works—He tries, + he brings it off—who else would dare?”
—
The section of Ulysses which Toynbee and Markson are arguing over is the “Ithaca” section.
Which just so happens to be my favorite part of Ulysses.
Which just so happens to be my favorite book.
Written in the question and answer style of a catechism, I think it is the finest achievement of the finest writer who ever lived.
High praise.
So I’d say I obviously side with Markson here:
Damn it, the ‘experiment’ works—He tries, + he brings it off—who else would dare?
The last page of David Markson’s copy of The Complete Greek Drama: Volume One by Various (Ed. Whitney J. Oates & Eugene O’Neill, Jr.):
On which Markson has made a list of various books on the Greeks, and placed dashes and angular brackets next to some of them.
The list is as follows:
“- R. C. Flickinger: The Greek Theater + Its Drama
T. H. Gaster: Thespis
– W. C. Greene: Moira—Fate, Good + Evil in Greek Thought
> Moses Hadas: A History of Greek Literature
A. E. Haigh: The Tragic Drama of the Greeks
– P. W. Harsh: Handbook of Classical Drama
– Gilbert Highet: The Classical Tradition
H. D. F. Kitto: Greek Tragedy
A. M. G. Little: Myth + Society in Attic Drama
> G. Norwood: Greek Tragedy
G. Norwood: Greek Comedy
A. W. Pickard-Cambridge: Dithyramb Tragedy + Comedy
J. T. Allen: Stage Antiquities of the Greeks + Romans
– M. Bieber: The History of Greek + Roman Theater
A. W. Pickard-Cambridge: The Attic Theater
> H. W. Smyth: Aeschylean Tragedy
> Gilbert Murray: Aeschylus, The Creator of Tragedy
G. Thompson: Aeschylus and Athens
> C. M. Bowra: Sophoclean Tragedy
T. B. M. Webster: An Introduction to Sophocles
W. M. Bates: Sophocles, Poet + Dramatist
> G. M. A. Grube: The Drama of Euripides
> Gilbert Murray: Euripides and His Age
W. M. Bates: Euripides, Student of Human Nature
> Gilbert Murray: Aristophanes, A Study
Croiset: Aristophanes + the Political Parties at Athens
P. E. Legrand: The New Greek Comedy
A. Koerte: Hellenistic Poetry”
—
As Markson told Joseph Tabbi in his interview in 1989:
“Some while back I must have spent, oh, two full years reading and rereading all the Greek and Latin stuff, not just the authors themselves but any number of commentaries, cultural histories, and so on.”
(I am fortunate enough to not only have his two volumes of The Complete Greek Drama, from which I’ve been taking scans this entire month, but also I own three of the books listed in the above list that were once Markson’s and are themselves marked up with some of his marginalia.)
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!
